"Grey Power!"

Story by: Hank Brown

It's now confirmed. I am a grownup.

Last night I went to my very first school Christmas pageant as a parent. There was a special seating section just for parents with video cameras so I dutifully took my place and waited for my kindergarten son to appear on stage. I listened to about six different classes sing and play flutes and ring bells. They must have performed at least twenty different Christmas songs that all sounded like "O Come All Ye Faithful."

The finale was, of course, the nativity scene with my son in a cameo role as one of the three shepherds. Up until this point, the video cameras were only intermittently busy, but now camcorder row was in full action as all the kid's were either singing or playing or ringing or posing as nativity characters. It was a great scene, and certainly worthy of a few minutes on the Brown family video tape, volume 6.

So, there I was in the middle camera world, and there was no denying it. I was a grownup. I call it the Peter Pan Syndrome... one day you look at your surroundings and you realize, that somehow, without even realizing how it happened, that you are a middle-aged adult losing hair, gaining weight, losing disposable income, and gaining disposable diapers.

You look at your car, it's a minivan. You drive this car in a daily carpool. The kids listen to rock & roll, but you know as soon as you drop them off you'll switch to information & talk radio. You tell your kids not to cross their eyes because they might freeze that way. You don't like baseball caps worn backwards and you despise big baggy pants worn about crotch level.

Wal-Mart is the most common entry in your checkbook. You drive close to the speed limit. You park in a lot with 1000 other minivans and sports-utility vehicles and carry your briefcase to the third floor of an office building amidst a maze of cubicles and copying machines...

You're not in Never Land any more.

Running provides constant reminders of our age development. Injuries are common, flexibility disappears, and "speed work" becomes relative. Races even separate us into age groups. I've now matured into the masters division. I remember when I was in my twenties, I used to think the masters runners were SO old!

In early December I decided to run in the masters division of the USA National Cross Country Championships at Stanford University. I was attending the USATF National Convention in nearby San Francisco, so I figured "why not?"

My roommate at the convention was James O'Brien, publisher and editor-in-chief of American Runner magazine.

"Are you going to the cross country meet on Saturday?" I asked him after his arrival.

"Yeah, are you?"

"Yep. I might be sorry, but I also decided to try the masters race," I revealed.

"Really? Me too." ...Brief silence.

My roommate had just turned into my competitor!

We quizzed each other. He was 41. I was 41. He was coming back from a back injury, I was coming back from hip injuries. He had recently been training pretty hard, some two-a-days, up to 65 miles per week. Ditto for me, except I had put in a few 80+ weeks. He dubbed me the favorite of our 2-man race but I wouldn't accept the role. He was taller and thinner and Irish. He was the man.

The next day between convention meetings we met for an easy training run along the Embarcadero. We each kept pace on the run which came as no surprise. We suspected that we were pretty evenly paired, but we didn't really want to know because it could possibly spoil the fun of the extra-curricular matchup that we were in the process of creating.

Others at the convention became aware of the new Brown/O'Brien Rivalry so they joined in the game and began to chart our workouts, meals, and beer intake. Nothing we did escaped scrutiny, from my morning chocolate chip cookies to James' night out with some friends. When he got back that night I was in bed working on my laptop computer.

"I knew it!" James exclaimed when he walked in the door. "They told me you were probably here resting. I bet you ran three times today, too!"

It was getting intense.

Race day arrived and we packed our race uniforms and spikes.

"What size spikes are you using?" He asked. I noticed he had some mean looking black shoes.

With a sly grin, I said "What are YOU using?" The gamesmanship was extending to the minor details...

We arrived at the meet and James, with a glance in my direction, remarked on how tough the course looked. I told him he might need his extra-long spikes to help him up the hills.

Of course we wanted to watch the other races so we frantically criss-crossed to several points along the course during the senior women's and men's races, and after the men's race I was feeling a little sluggish. It was only an hour until THE race so I found a tree and tried to rest.

Finally, race time arrived. We took off and after about a half mile sorting through the pack I looked beside me and saw those black spikes, but about the best I could do between heavy breathing was acknowledge his presence. It was going to be an even matchup after all.

We went through the first mile too fast and during the second mile it seemed like dozens of runners were pulling away from us like cars on the interstate. It was a humbling experience to be so far behind so many runners that were my age or older.

On the next mile we hit a long incline and I was practically crawling. But I was keeping up with my roommate.

"Do you feel as bad as I do?" I suspected he did.

"I'm #%&@ed." James had such a way with words.

On the next long downhill I pulled slightly ahead. At this point, with several steep uphills waiting (James later called the course "evil"), my only goal was to finish and hopefully claim roommate bragging rights. I did finish and I did win the Brown/Obrien Rivalry by about ten seconds, but neither of us were really claiming superiority over each other, and certainly not over the course.

We met in the finish area and after a brief recovery we talked and laughed about the problems we each had along the course. Despite the difficulty of the competition we had survived, and we had made it fun by creating a side competition that ended up being a thread for lots of jokes and laughs. As grown men often do, we had gone back to our little boy roots.

Peter Pan would have been proud.

Cool Running 12.07.02.