Rookies!

As a high school student, my good buddy Brian Russell and I were the undisputed experts of the neighborhood in lawn maintenance, you wanted your lawn mowed, you came to us. You wanted to mow a yard, you got our permission. Grass grew until we said it got cut. One day Brian and I were driving down our street and we see a couple of whippersnappers pushing a substandard lawn mower down the street trying to drum up business on our street. Well, the Gotti and Soprano of neighborhood lawn manicure couldn't let this slide by without action. Without consulting each other one glace showed us our course. We knew what must be done:

"Rookies!"we yelled simultaneous at these novices. Brian and I proved we still ruled the care of the quarter-acre lots in Town n Country. These newbies knew who was in charge.

Today, my guys and I were in our usual weekend workout haunt, Croom, when we were confronted with the biggest example of rookiedom since that faithful day as students at AP Leto Comprehensive (yeah right) High School. My gang included:

Woody, Boston Marathon Qualifier, grizzled veteran of countless ultra races, along with Dan Miller reigning Godfather of Croom.

Candi, Boston Marathon Qualifier, PhD in exercise physiology, budding ultra runner, very smart runner gal.

Becky, Boston Marathon Qualifier, Croom 50K Master's course record holder, top 3 female finisher in the GEER 100K

Julie, Boston Marathon Qualifier, Budding Ultra runner.

Yours Truly, yadda, yadda.

Trudy- Woody is the Envy of ultra runners everywhere because Trudy is the 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2005, & 2006 Crew person of the year (don't know what happened in 2003). Trudy can navigate her around the Barkley course and have a cold Gatorade waiting for you after each loop!

The Rookies: 4 Chippies from Pinellas County training for the Pikes Peak Marathon.

Oh, where to begin? Their mistakes, too many to remember them all. Including, but not limited to:

Late start- We met these young ladies before they ran as were enjoying too few AFTER run beverages.

Fashion Faux- I wouldn't just use the term chippie (ok, I would) but this wasn't a Bayshore run. This wasn't a 5K, this is Croom. This is dirt, slime, spiderwebs, it's a sweat-yourtailoff-roast-your skin course. These newbies were wearing matching running skirts, hair teased to the moon, and I could swear there was some Lycra in the crowd. Oh, they were asking for it, chippies!

TMI- Ok, so I heard them say it was there first trip there, I gotta let them have it. They flat revealed too much information.

Not enough water- They took off with one water bottle each for a 15-mile training run. I know it's not their fault, but they wanted to know, and I'm not kidding, if they could buy some refreshments on the loop. Yeah, sure, just put your money next to the magic cooler which appears as you click your heels three times and say....

And their biggest sin:

They didn't ASK! Shoot, isn't it written somewhere that all newbies to Croom (and All Blue Sharks, always!) must inform either Dan, Woody, or me of their intent to train at Croom. We will consider the request and get back to the applicant in a reasonable time frame. They didn't ask.

So, how did we handle these rooks? Did we give them the ole' Brian and Andy salute?

Nah, we're all grown up now. We talked with them and even left them water and Gatorade at the 1/2 way point.

You know, we were all rookies once, even the Godfather!