Things have changed a lot over the years. I’m now 57 now, and when I got out of law school—1977—is when I started running. And at that time, I went through a stretch there in the later part of the 70’s and 80’s where I think I ended up running a dozen marathons. And so I was doing quite a bit for somebody with no talent, no speed and no ability. I’m certainly not built like a runner. But I had a lot of fun. I continued to run for many years after that but the marathon training I didn’t have time for as I became more and more involved in football. I just didn’t have time to put in the miles I needed to. So I graduated to working out in the gym. What I do now, is what I’ve been doing the last several years: I lift weights 3 to 4 days a week an hour each. So, I might lift 3 and a half to 4 hours a week. And then I do cardio. I try to do an hour of cardio every day seven days a week. Except during the football season on Sunday. We figure it’s six or seven miles that we run during a football game.
I think that it’s a dozen. I was trying to count them up. I think it’s right around there. I ran a number of San Diego marathons, I ran a number of marathons in Phoenix and then I ran the Avenue of the Giants, which was just absolutely unbelievable. I’ve run LA. I enjoyed that because there were so many people. I ran Chicago. The Chicago Marathon was kind of a funny story. I was officiating in the PAC-10 at that time and I worked a game, hopped on a flight, and I flew to Chicago—it was a red-eye—and I got into Chicago about 5 o’clock in the morning. A friend picked me up and we drove right to the starting line. I didn’t really have much sleep at all. Maybe a little on the plane. That was kind of a crazy marathon.
My personal best was 3:03. That always disappointed me because I would have loved to have run Boston. And at that time the time break for my age was under three hours. Most of my marathons were pretty consistently below 3 and a half hours. Like I said, 3:03 was the best I ran and that was at the Avenue of the Giants. But I was never particularly talented. I wasn’t fast and like I said I’m not built like a runner.
I used to tease my friends who did it. Why in the world would anybody do something so stupid as to go out and run for no reason? I couldn’t understand it at all. I had a neighbor and good friend, George Varga, and he ran every day. One day, I don’t know why, it was a weekend and I can remember the day just like it was yesterday, he talked me into it. “Come on, we’re just running over to the high school and back.” So I went along with him. And it was kind of cool. I enjoyed it. I experienced that second wind, which is something that I had never really seen in that kind of a context. For the first mile I was really winded and then it seemed to just kind of go away and I was okay. And so then I started running with George and we had a group. There were a small group of us that ran together and met together all the time. And I think that social aspect of it was one of the things that got me interested in it and kept me going early on.
Yes, I’ve been involved in sports my whole life. In high school I played football, basketball, and either track or baseball. And I did competitive swimming for many years when I was younger. And then I went to the University of Texas, El Paso, on a football scholarship. So I’ve been involved in athletics my whole life.
I much prefer to run outside. The only reason that I’ve shifted to so much inside on a machine is time management. It gives me an hour where I get my cardio workout in, but I’m also able to do something else at the same time. Of course if I run in the streets I can’t. But it’s so much more enjoyable to run outside. I don’t understand people. Most people will run on a treadmill in the gym and they’re not doing anything else but running. If that’s all I was doing was just running, boy I would be outside where you’ve got things to look at, you got the pretty scenery, you’ve got people. I love that.
That is something that has varied over the years as well. The last several years I’ve been working out late in the afternoon. I start work very early in the morning and I’ll try to get out of the office by 4 o’clock and go catch my workout at that point in time. It depends so much upon what my schedule is. If I’m in trial then I am not going to able to do that, so I’ll work out first thing in the morning.
It’s certainly a challenge. It’s a challenge the busier your life gets. When I hear people say, “I just can’t find time to get the workout in,” it’s just a matter of prioritizing. Working out to me is a priority.
Absolutely [staying in shape helps to being a referee]. We do run a lot. In a football game, it’s almost like fartleks, because you’ll sprint over here and then you’ll stop. And then you’ll jog over here and then you’ll stop. Then there will be another sprint. And then you’re off for ten seconds. There’s a lot of that kind of thing. That definitely helps me in those scenarios. You have to keep your cool and maintain your concentration throughout the game.
It’s our responsibility to stay in shape. At one of the mandatory clinics we have, which is in mid- to late-July, we all get together and go through quite a number of agility drills and physical workouts, lot of running and testing to insure before the season starts that everyone is in shape. There’s weight limits. It’s not just strictly on weight but body fat and BMI. To be sure that everybody is physically fit. We have very, very thorough physicals that we have to go through every year. The league has a cardiologist that checks all the physical results and all the tracings from the stress test, etc., to satisfy themselves that everybody is very much physically fit.
[I will run with other officials during the season] depending upon who is on my crew. Some years I don’t have anybody on the crew who is a runner on the road. There’s always guys on the crew who workout in the hotel on Saturday but in terms of going out on the road, some years I’ve had some guys every Saturday it was just standard. We’d get in and we’d get running before our meeting happened. That just depended upon who I had…Crews change every year.
I have music playing all the time. I really do love music. I listen to music when I’m working out. I listen to music when I’m on an airplane. I spend a lot of time on airplanes. I listen to music around the house all the time. I’m a real avid music listener. My taste in music frankly is pretty much everything. The only thing I don’t really listen to is country. I’ve never really gotten into country. A couple of my daughters listen to country all the time, we joke about it.
If I’m really looking for a pump from music…I’ll setup my iPod with different playlists. I’ll listen to the electronic. I got a lot of electronic or trance. That kind of music that has a heavy beat with no lyrics. That’s what would be the motivating music, if you will.
One of the things I enjoy about running is the ability not to have to concentrate. I can just let my mind go. I can think about anything I want. I can just relax. The football field is just the opposite. You got to be thinking all the time and you got to be concentrating on what you’re doing. So, in that regard they’re very different. Maybe that’s kind of ironic. You’re doing the same thing, you’re running in both circumstances but on the football field you’re running with a great deal of concentration and off the football field I’m running with no concentration. Now I’m sure that serious runners are concentrating but I don’t want to put myself in that category.
I wish I could [do another marathon]. I wish I had the time to train for one. But more importantly even, I wish I could get into that kind of shape. One of the things that I loved about marathon running was how good I felt to be in that kind of shape. I don’t have the time to do it now. I think my body would break down. I would love to be able to do it but there are too many things that stand in the way. I think my marathon days are behind me.
