He puts on running shorts and shoes and summons the willing for a "heat run"
across the parched prairie. He was at it again on Thursday.
Welcome to the 100-degree club.
Amazingly fit at age 57, Bush leads Secret Service agents, U.S. Marines and
occasionally White House staff members on a run across his 1,600-acre ranch.
"OK, let's go," he will say when everyone is ready, and then he takes off.
Those who can finish the 3-mile circuit up and down hills without stopping
get a gray T-shirt marking them as a member of the president's 100-degree club.
Those who do not finish have to make do with the class photo.
Bush, who can run a mile in 7-1/2 minutes, typically leads the pack and is
done long before the last stragglers cross the finish line.
When White House staff ran with him a couple of weeks ago, "not a single
staffer could keep up with him," one participant said.
"There's no pressure whatsoever to try to keep up with him," this participant
said. "He knows that there are people who can't keep up."
One of the stragglers was White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card. Although
plodding, he completed the run. Some staffers were not able to finish.
The key to success seems to be not trying to keep up with Bush, who had a
physical last Saturday that again showed his aerobic capacity and cardiovascular
fitness level were in the top 1 percent of men his age.
During the first couple of days of Bush's August vacation, the temperature
did not make it to 100 degrees. But on Tuesday just past noon, the thermometer
at a Secret Service checkpoint finally pegged 100, and word spread quickly the
time had come.
Tuesday's participants were a contingent of U.S. Marines, and a couple were
unable to finish.
This is not for the faint-hearted. With the area in the grip of a heat wave,
the Waco Tribune-Herald advised on Thursday that people reduce or eliminate
strenuous activities or put them off to the coolest time of day.
But the heat is not stopping the hardy. There was a golf tournament at
Cottonwood Creek Golf Course in nearby Waco on Wednesday afternoon when the
thermometer was at 104 F.
