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We All Strive for the Top Step

February 22nd, 2010

Watching the Olympics for the last couple of days has been exhilarating.  I love the speed of the winter sports, even though you will never see me out on the slopes, sliding down the bob run, or gliding across the ice on skates (that last one is not a pretty picture, believe me). 

One other thing that really interests me is the level of preparation.  For the top level athletes, they prepare constantly for their moment on the world stage, and for those of them that do it best, they get to stand on the top step.

Now most of us will never have the opportunity to appear on the world stage, but we do have to perform at a high level every day.  And, in some ways, we are not that different than an Olympic athlete.  First of all, we both have to perform without the use of drugs.  When one of the players who had been selected for the U.S. Olympic Hockey team was unable to play due to injury, the players that were available to replace the injured person were limited because of who had been participating in the drug testing program for the six months prior to the games.  Sound familiar?  The drugs that the governing bodies are looking for may be different, but those of us who are in operations are all subject to random testing, and clean living is a fact of railroad life these days.

One area that the athletes have us beat is physical conditioning.  Most winter athletes are prime examples of physical and aerodynamic efficiency (sorry curlers, but sliding a 42-pound stone does not require as good aerodynamics as it does physical prowess).  Unfortunately, the instances of diabetes, heart disease, obesity, and other physical ailments is very high for people in our industry (myself included), which is kind of unusual for an area where there is some significant physical labor at times.  In reality, while an athlete will probably do hundreds of hours of non-related training for a couple minutes of performing, how many of us take the time during the week to exercise regularly?

The area that I think that we have the athletes beat is endurance.  A top performing athlete may have a career that lasts ten or fifteen years at the most, and most of them have not made enough money to retire and do nothing for the rest of their lives.  A railroader may have a career spanning 40 years (or more), and many never retire, continuing to work at the jobs they love until the very end (unfortunately there are too many of us who are leaving this world for the reasons stated in the paragraph above this one).

So, while we may not get to stand on the top step in front of the world with a medal around our necks, I think that we all get to perform on our own stage on par with the best every day.

—By Steve Friedland

steven-fb.jpgSteve Friedland is a child of the railroad industry.  Following summers and vacations working on the track gang for the family-owned Morristown & Erie Railway, a 42-mile New Jersey short line, he started full-time in 1994.  He has worked in all areas of the railroad, including track, mechanical, signals, and operations, and currently is a member of the management team for the company as director of operations in Morristown, N.J. In 1999, he founded Short Line Data Systems, a provider of railroad EDI and dispatching software, AEI hardware, and management consulting to the short line industry.  He also served as  chairman of the ASLRRA’s Technology Committee for the past four years.

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