Road Kill! - Surviving the hazards of Guam's roads...

Anyone who runs Guam's roads inevitably encounters road kill. Road kill is any road or sidewalk hazard which has the capacity to imperil your health, bring your running days to an abrupt end, or just scare you real good! Road kill goes beyond the usual challenges of navigating sidewalks, which were built with barely sufficient width to allow an average person and a utility pole to pass each other without colliding. Road kill is more difficult to detect (until its too late!) and is, therefore, more deadly.

Consider the nearly invisible remnants of galvanized metal highway signage--those 2"x 2" square lengths of post about 1-4 serrated inches in height from the sidewalk. I call these shards of death: Iron Maidens. You find the miscreant spikes firmly embedded in the concrete walk in no predictable pattern. If you fail to see them in time you may find one firmly embedded in some part of your anatomy! The potential for unplanned, street-side arthroscopic surgery is great indeed. At one time there may actually have been a stop sign or a highway marker attached, but the sign vanished long ago with a past typhoon or was never even installed to begin with. The responsible government agency, which gave the orders to set these nasty little traps, seems never to give a thought to inspect the safety of our sidewalks. If they did, all of the offending shards of metal could be ground off level with the sidewalk and their danger neutralized with only a week or two of dedicated effort.

One runner's solution to the the problem was to carry a can of bright orange flourescent spray paint and mark each and every offending stump of steel wherever it had sprouted on the urban landscape. This is the runner's version of "tagging" their turf. This ingenious method was abandoned, however, because of the incessant ping, ping, ping and rat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat of the spray can's ball bearing. The noise nearly drove the runner and her nearby companions out of their minds during the remainder of their run.

Another danger frequently encountered is tectonic-plate drift. You would perhaps never dream that such fundamental forces of geology would impinge on a runner's safety. Think again! How else do we explain the huge gaps, deep crevasses and sudden shifts in the elelvation of Guam's sidewalks? I have run along Marine Drive and dropped into previously unexplored regions of Guam's famous limestone aquifer! Believe me, there are easier ways to get a drink! I've had my ears pop from the pressurization differential going from one square of sidewalk to the square directly ahead and do-o-o-own-n-n-n! (One can only wonder at the shocking effect this has on cyclists!)

Botanical Hazards are yet another type of road kill the Guam Runner must brave. The Bouganvaille whip is an especially fearsome impediment capable of leaving welts or deep puncture wounds on the face and arms. These steroidally mutant cat-o-nine tails can be found growing in front of merchant's stores and other similar places where you would think the owners had some responsibility to maintain their landscaping. Another botanical experiment-turned-lethal has come courtesy of a government agency which built numerous landscaping squares right in the middle of the already impassible sidewalks. In the early morning hours these squares of spongy bermuda grass are indistinguishable from and level with the rest of the sidewalk. However, upon the first foot strike into one of these neglected beauty spots, the runner will immediately sink six inches below the sidewalk surface. After a brief episode of wildly flapping arms and hands, the almost airborne runner assumes the prone position and makes an emergency landing. (Runners, no matter how hard we flap, we simply lack the ability to fly!)

Construction souveniers are one final obstruction of which I've been made aware. One of the most dangerous and least easy to detect is "the nail". The nail was recently encountered by our own Joanne Bonine. The head of the nail was positioned only 1/2 an inch above the surface of the road and well below Ms. Bonine's fully alert road-debris radar. It had been left behind after the temporary traffic marker it once held in place had been removed. The nail, obviously upset that it had joined the ranks of Guam's unemployed, decided to make itself useful again and secured Ms. Bonine's shoe to the pavement just as she passed by. I didn't witness the actual event but I did see the cuts and abrasions the next day. Ouch!

How do we runners survive road kill and prevent ourselves from becoming road kill? (And, make no mistake, we must do something about it. Clearly the government, the construction workers, and the merchants with untamed-jungle-for-landscaping have no inclination to do anything about it.) Most of us simply memorize the course. I have intimate knowledge of virtually every road kill hazard on any stretch of Marine Drive you can name. From my conversations with fellow runners, I know that many of you do too. Obviously this proves, that besides other obvious health benefits, running also contributes to the development of great mental capacity, especially memory.

Wouldn't it be nice if some of the creators of road kill would start taking responsibility to clean up the messes, trim the foilage on their easements, etc.? What if our government agencies actually took it as a matter of protecting the public welfare to design sidewalks of adequate width, not build obstructions, landscaping pits and utility poles smack in the middle of them? What if these same agencies periodically inspected the roads and sidewalks to clear them of obvious hazards? Oh well...until then, dear runners, beware and be very careful, 'cause on the walkways and roads of our beautiful island...it's a jungle!

In it for the Long Run,

Neil Culbertson, GRC Prez
6-06-2001