Wednesday, December 29, 2010

2010 Season Ends

My New Year’s resolution is to provide timely content here on the Blogspot. For starters, I’m going to parse out some postings on the results of our on-line, post WCXIX Competitor Survey. We had an unprecedented 46% return rate- a statistic that validates the interest and enthusiasm of our athletes. Over 170 individuals took the time to write a message about what you liked and didn’t like. I’m going to divide my summary into the following categories. 1. Venues: Myrtle Beach vs. Las Vegas. 2. Site Specific accolades, improvements and suggestions 3) Protocols and Procedures (i.e., how we organize the competition and 4. Rule changes.

Thursday, May 6, 2010

One down, 20-something to go...

Season Kickoff and Update
Start System
In the minds of some, the new Christmas tree is a major change but a more careful inspection reveals little has changed. Contrary to what you may have believed, touching the High-Rise Pack was never allowed. The major difference now is that competitors no longer have to depress a pressure switch with their hands. Instead, you stand on the 3’ long pad. We’ve taken out the human element of the start. Every race starts the same way, to the same count. As soon as both competitors are on the pads, the computer automatically stages the race and the lights start the count down. Check out the video posted on our website for more details.
The 2010 Tour
Scheduling an event these days has been a challenge, to use a familiar word. This is a complicated process, made more complicated by the shortage of local sponsorship. In an ideal world, we’d have a national sponsor that would fill-in the void, supporting the shortfall for every venue. This would allow us to post a whole year’s schedule well in advance. Coordinating more than 30 active requests takes hundreds of telephone calls and almost 2,000 staff hours. So, until we can find a new national sponsor, we ask for your understanding and patience.
The Official Firefighter Combat Challenge Forum
We realize that we’ve not spent a lot of effort on our Forum, but this is going to change. Brandon Cunningham will monitor the Training category. Jackie Riedel is the staff liaison and will ensure that everyone’s questions are answered. It’s incredibly easy to use- one mouse click from the homepage. Create a user name/account and in a day, you can be posting. We’re very easy to contact- outside of the forum as well. We pride ourselves in being responsive- returning telephone calls or answering email as soon as possible.
Good To Go (G2G) Program
There’s more than one way to skin a cat, and we certainly wouldn’t warrant that there’s only one way to prepare for the Challenge. We want to make everyone’s first event a success. It’s amazing what a few hours of hands-on training, under the tutelage of the likes of a David Bowmen can do for your first attempt. In a perfect world, we’d prefer to see everyone do a Tandem first before attempting a solo run.
The Keiser
It’s an established fact that the coefficient of friction of the Keiser sled changes with temperature. For this reason, every effort is made to establish a N-S orientation to keep both sides of the course in the sun. Like every sport other than say- bowling and pool, weather is a factor- and I’ve written on this topic numerous times before. Over the winter, we explored the use of heating elements that would keep the tray at a constant temperature, or at least at some standards number of degrees above ambient when temperatures were below 70°F. What we learned is that 110v is not going to work because we’re an all-weather event and electrocution is not an option. So, we’re going to have to explore the use of 12v as an alternative. In the meantime, as a multi-season, outdoor event, the elements will be a factor. Sorry.
Rules & Protocols
We’ve been fielding a few phone calls about the boot rule. This is not a change- only in enforcement. Regrettably, we have been lax and will be no longer. With the addition of the Over 50 Relay category, Jostens will provide Championship Rings, but rings for the Tandems will be dropped to offset the costs.

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

2010 Is Upon Us!

It was 20 years ago this month that the first ever Firefighter Combat Challenge was held at the University of Maryland’s Fire Rescue Institute in College Park. WTOP, the local CBS affiliate covered the event and the five municipalities that fielded teams. The winning time: 3:40!: posted by Lloyd Jackson of Prince William (VA) County. Just about everyone who participated has retired. Fire Chief magazine devoted a four page story and several full page color shots. The news piece was the springboard for DuPont to step up and fund our first national tour in 1992. FETN covered our World Challenge I the next year in Anaheim, CA, coincidental with the IAFC’s annual meeting. It’s sometime hard to believe what’s happened in the interim. All of the props from the first year would have easily fit into the back of a pickup truck. This season, we’re rolling out four towed trailers and a brand new drag-race style Christmas tree starting system. The fun goes on and on. New people and new places add to the pleasure of meeting some of the greatest people who walk on the face of this planet. Thanks for playing!

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Have You Been Watching the Olympics?

Originally, the Olympics were about the athletes. The ethos of sport- higher, faster, stronger was easily understood by all. However, the Olympics have lost some of their allure, as member nations are not unlike major sports franchises: athletes giving up citizenship for a berth on a foreign county’s team. The Olympics were supposed to be about the individual athletes, but that’s not going to pay the huge production cost, so countries like Greece go bankrupt to put on a show that they can ill-afford. Long ago, the hometown team was comprised of local guys who had roots in the community. Now, it’s about the highest bidder.

In a nation where sports figures assume near god-like stature, one has to reflect on what is really important. Millions of people badly in need of exercise watch athletes badly in need of rest. Salaries bear sad testimony to our inverted value system. In a perfect world, first grade teachers should be at the top of the pyramid. Or as Lee Iacocca said, “Only the best would be teachers and the rest would have to settle for something else.”

But whether it’s a visit to the Dallas Cowboys palace with Mark Gist or Disney World last week, there are lessons that can be learned and transferred to make the Firefighter Combat Challenge better and better. Many Olympians have trained intensely for four years to get their 12 seconds in the limelight. Listening to the NBC commentary, I was making the comparisons between these world-class athletes and our own FCC Competitors.

Some of this stuff is heart-wrenching. A single slip and it’s all down the tubes. Things that are outside your control. Skiing down the side of the mountain at 60+ mph and catching an edge; inconsistency in the ice; white-out conditions; blizzards, melting snow, broken Zamboni’s and so on and so forth. And it’s not just at the Olympics. How about NASCAR’s premier race the Daytona 500? Having to stop the race for more than two hours to round up all the Bondo® in the universe to fix a pothole on the course. That cost NASCAR 17 million Fox viewers and a lot of prestige.

Just about all of the sports that happen outdoors have weather-related issues. Track and field will negate any wind-aided records. In golf, if you play in the morning, the greens are wet. Rodeo is animal-dependent. We all know about the NFL and their “go in any condition” policy. Plus, the kicking game becomes very much a crap-shoot with winds aloft having a huge part in the outcome. And speaking of outcomes, what about a blown call changing the winning team- a factor that occurs with annoying regularity.

Baseball calls it quits as soon as it starts to rain, but again wind and temperature have a lot to do with what happens with the long fly balls. So, outside of bowling, curling, billiards and a few other hermetically-controlled indoor sports, weather, time of day, etc. are a part of sport. Even in drag racing, a pretty much, straight-ahead, reaction-time activity has their preferred lanes.

So what’s the take-away? We carry close to 200,000 pounds of stuff over 35,000 miles each year and set-up more than 20 times the Scott Firefighter Combat Challenge with a consistency that sees a guy like Joe Horton come within seconds of his PR at each race. We strive mightily to tweak the rules to be unlike basketball; i.e., “keep the officials out of it.”

Weather, especially rain can impact traction. As a parking-lot based sport, we are held hostage to the surface that the host can provide. Sometimes, we’re square in the middle of downtown, between the curbs on Main Street. Or, under the $100M VivaVision on Fremont Street in Las Vegas. We walk a balancing act between providing the viewing public with a great show or sequestering ourselves to obscure locations with great traction. Difficult choices sometimes. We are well aware that the coefficient of friction of the thermoplastic gliders on the Keiser Forcible Entry Simulator, i.e., “the Slammer” changes with temperature. We are driven by our relentless pursuit for perfection in an imperfect world. In the grand scheme of sport, we run a pretty consistent and professional contest.

“Everyone’s a critic” is an epitaph that is frequently heard in all walks of life and certainly has applicability in sport as proven by the sports pages. There are a lot of gainfully employed reporters who make a pretty good living criticizing. But, we’re looking for solutions. Our search for perfection is not driven to make things easier; it’s to make them the same. The “level playing field“ is a reference that is based on sport and it’s a part of our mission.

Your dedication does not go unnoticed. Similarly, in fulfillment of our obligation, we invest thousands of dollars and man-hours to continually improve the platform. We just want to provide you with the stage that you deserve to showcase your talents to our stakeholders: the taxpayers who foot the bill for the best fire protection that we can provide. As the Olympics came to a conclusion, I couldn’t help but reflect on how so many of you train with the intensity of the world-class athletes that you are. I’m sorry that there are not million-dollar endorsements awaiting your successes. But I believe that there are great rewards that transcend the receipt of a medal. There are actual people walking around today that would not have been able to do so without your intervention. That’s something that you can live with.