It's Princeton, In A Walk

Imagine that you walked out of Jadwin Gym and then started to head - on foot, mind you - to Route 1 and then all the way up Route 1 to the New Jersey Turnpike.

That's a long walk. But then imagine that you kept going on the Turnpike all the way to the George Washington Bridge. Who would do that? 

But you don't stop there. You keep walking, all the way to the Connecticut state line. Then you can stop.

Or, by contrast, you walked out of Jadwin Gym and went the other way, down Route 1 to I-95 and then to Philadelphia. And then you walked to the Pennsylvania state line. And then you kept going, all the way through Bucks County down through Center City Philadelphia and then to Lincoln Financial Field.

Then you could stop there.

If you did the first walk, you'd cover about 77 miles. If you did the second, you'd go about 56. 

And that's how far TigerBlog's colleague's Warren Croxton (77) and Andrew Borders (56) walked in four days last week as part of the Ivy Step Challenge that TB mentioned earlier in the week. 

The final leaderboard did not include individual winners, but TB has a sense that they were 1-2. That's how they appeared on the daily leaderboards over the weekend, and who would walk more than that? 

Their extraordinary mileage led Princeton to the win in the Ivy Step Challenge, taking first in both total steps and average total steps by those who participated. In fact, Princeton had more than one million total steps more than runner-up Cornell and nearly 2,000 more average steps per participant than runner-up Cornell.

Princetonians actually walked more steps than the third, fourth and fifth place finishers (Brown, Yale, Columbia) combined. 

Sounds like total Ivy titles won a bit.

It all reminds TB of an old Rodney Dangerfield joke - "my doctor told me to walk 10 miles a day for two weeks. I called him and said I feel fine but I'm 140 miles from my house."

In all seriousness, that's an incredible amount of walking. TigerBlog rode his bike (that didn't count in the challenge at all) each of the four days and didn't go 77 total miles. 

In fact, TB's colleague Chas Dorman asked Warren if he had put his phone (and the walking app) on his dog and let the dog just go crazy. But no. Warren and Andrew both produced proof from their app that they actually had walked all those steps and miles.

So congratulations to Warren and Andrew, and to all the walkers from all the schools. 

And thanks to all of the Campus Recreation people - Princeton's is led by the ultra-capable Jess Ward - who organized this. Just figure out a way to include bikers next time.

As for Warren and Andrew, they're both celebrating birthdays this week. As TB remembers it, the Office of Athletic Communications has had a lot of people work there who were August birthdays.

At one point, there was someone who worked in the OAC whose birthday was August 1, and the person who replaced him when he left was also born on August 1. How many times has that happened?

The person who replaced that person was born in August, one day before Andrew, who replaced her. If Andrew ever leaves, the job description should include "must be born between August 1 and August 15."

Meanwhile, in other OAC news, there are two calls each week to discuss content and strategies during the pandemic. Like this blog, the larger OAC challenge is to keep telling stories and keep everyone - athletes, coaches, fans, parents - connected. 

And that means coming up with compelling content when there are no games and no students on campus. It's as challenging as anything has been in TB's long tenure here.

Given how much the pandemic has disrupted the experience of the athletes, it's the least that the OAC can do, to try to make them know that they are still valued and still Princeton Tigers.

To that end, there are all kinds of plans. 

Hey, if you have guys who can walk from here to Connecticut, not having events won't stand in the way of content.