Air Force LTC says “walk test” discriminates (Photo added)
I hate to pick on you Air force guys, but your peers make it so easy. The Air Force Times reports that a 56-year-old Lieutenant Colonel Chris Cote has filed an EO complaint against the Air Force because he says that their 1-mile walk test discriminates against his old ass (for the record, my son is in the Air Force, and I’m 56, so get your knickers untwisted). It seems that he just barely passed his one-mile walk, and instead of working out, he sat on his ass and did some math;
Cote has since filed an equal-opportunity complaint with the service, claiming that his age meant he would receive a worse VO2 max score. The lieutenant colonel claims the formula penalizes older airmen because VO2 max scores naturally decline with age but Air Force formulas don’t account enough for that dip.
Hey, Colonel Cote, here’s something you might not have considered – either work out more or retire. It’s a one mile walk, for Pete’s sake. They’re not asking you to run a three hour marathon. You’re old, but you’re not an invalid. Walk two miles every day and the one mile walk will be a breeze. I wish I could find a picture of him.
See that’s the reason we all laughed when the Air Force made that commercial about AF Basic being tougher than the Marines.
Thanks to ROS who found his picture. That hair hat might be slowing him down, along with his non-aerodynamic frame;
Hey! I’m big boned!
Category: Military issues
Everything is discrimination.
It discriminates against him because he can’t do it.
Heck I had to do a 1.5 mile run for PRT and stopped mid-way for a smoke and still beat most of the kids, and this guy is whining about a mile walk?
Um…Hey you! Yea you Cote! Quit yer bitching old man, get up off you ass and walk a couple miles or ride a damn bicycle…*YOU PUSSY*!
my NCOs always told me the standards do not change to fit your wants. You change to maintain the standards.
As I’ve said time and again, you can not change the standards. It will hobble the force.
A Lt Col in the Marines with any expectation of ever pinning on full bird would be ready and willing to be out in front of a battalion of 18-30 year olds leading PT. Just saying. Then again there aren’t all that many non-mustang 56 year old Lt Cols in the Corps.
As memory serves, incoming mortar rounds and rockets are also discriminatory.
FYI LTC Cote, I can vouch for Lilyea being in shape…
Cannot defend this! I retired when it looked like I would no longer be able to pass the test and/or carry my portion of the load.
It’s what ya DO, uhm, cough, cough, SIR!
Man up, fool. Either do what it takes to pass the test, or retire if you are not capable of maintaining the level of fitness REQUIRED to do the job AND minimally qualify to wear the uniform.
Still proud of having worn AF blue, even when they changed it to look more like a bus driver.
Yer not the average, ordinary bus driver there, OWB. 😉
They need to come up with a Cote cadence for morning PT. Something like:
Air Force, Air Force, get out your racks.
Time to increase your VO2 Max!
Life may be hell on a Navy Ship,
But Air Force formulas don’t account for that dip!
Nothin’ wrong with bein’ a bus driver, of course – it’s just that I waren’t one!
They stuck us in something that looked like a very badly cut polyester suit! Having a brain fart here but believe the fool’s name who started all that (and unrealistic physical requirements) was named McPeak. He showed his true anorexic colors when he endorsed Kerry.
Ha-ha, if he thinks it’s too much trouble he should come out to one of our local malls in winter. All the old bags speed walking around the mall will run him over.
OWB: It’s bad when the Air Force adopts a bad uniform. It’s worse when the Coast Guard adopts part of it.
Our dress pants, shirts and ties are all Air Force issue. We use a plain garrison cap similar to yours without the piping. In short, you’re Greyhound and we’re Trailways!
9th row down, far left:
http://www.512aw.afrc.af.mil/photos/mediagallery.asp?galleryID=697&?id=-1&page=6&count=48
10th*
Hah, AP! It had made sense to me back whenever it was (late 70’s, early 80’s?) when someone decided that everyone’s utility (office wear kind of utility, not fatigue) shirts should be styled alike – blue for AF, green for Army, tan/brown for Marines. Not sure that the Navy ever got on board with that program.
Not sure if all McPeak’s standards were ever fully emplimented. At one point he had dropped the weight requirements so low that very few normally healthy people could weigh out within limits.
Hmmm. IF some of those idiotic standards are still hanging out there somewhere, perhaps this clown has a reasonable point? Not likely, but we may need to check that out!
I really need to stop posting while fighting pneumonia. It’s the 10th row and far RIGHT.
Shoot me.
Geez. A one mile WALK!!!???
That clown sounds like the O-3 that replaced our RIF’d CO in ’74.
We had heard we lost our Company Commander and now had a new CO, some staff puke from SETAF – word was he commanded a K-9 platoon in Nam. So at PT formation at oh-dark-thirty the next morning, there he was, in ALL his glory. We’re standing there in jump-boots and fatigues, ready to rock and then finish with at least five miles, and what do we see? This dingle-berry is in a color coordinated jogging suit and tennis shoes. He didn’t even last a mile.
Took him all of about six months to destroy the best rifle company in the Oh Nine. I know it’s wrong, but to this day I despise that turd – and that’s probably an insult to fecal matter everywhere.
I understand this idiot is a 9-5 zoomie … but CRIMINY!!, hit the frikkin’ gym, bud! And stay outta the O-Club, you sorry excuse for an officer.
This is just sad. Someone of his rank ‘should’ know better.
Put out or get out.
Of course the test discriminates. It’s DESIGNED to, moron! It descriminates against those who cannot, or will not, maintain a minimum level of fitness. From the looks of ROS’s photo, his problem is that he’s dragging an extra chin around the track.
Walk a mile? W-A-L-K? That walk. Walk? i’m trying. The lardass is complaining about a ONE(1) MILE WALK? Gotta be a mistake in the report? One mile carry of what? Another man? Two 5-gallon cans of water? Don’t tell me that this is a one stinkin’ mile walk just toting his own sorry, goat-smellin’, maggot infested ass around. Don’t. I couldn’t handle that.
And here I thought I was a slug in my early 30’s for only being able to do Navy PRT run in 11 minutes (1.5 miles) after doing nearly six months underway.
I didn’t even get semi-serious about working out or running until I got out and wasn’t burning shitloads of calories like I was when I was a “yute”.
This must be a miss print or some huge misunderstanding! Airmen are as tough as Marines, remember?! This person is a disgrace. My last company CO, a mustang, Cpt Merrett would have rather pulled something or ruptured something than to let any of his Marines beat him at PT! EVERY officer I served under led by example, not law suit. I guess that’s why we’re Marines.
I watched the video and I was with the DI right up to the last statement. He has a point that with a much shorter Basic the Airmen have to work twice as hard to get in shape before the end test, however, to then say they are in better shape than Marines is silly.
as for walking a mile…WALK? If you have to walk the mile then you should get your lazy ass out of the military and get a job as a Wal-Mart greeter. thats just appalling.
What is a 56 year old doing in the military anyway?
In Saudi in ’97, some AF types who shared our SEA hut (with the bathroom module divided by the corridor going down the middle in between) were complaining we used THEIR bathroom when we got off-shift and showered before crashing instead of just OUR bathroom. Okay, I said, I’ll put up some signs. One said “AIR FORCE”. The other said “MEN”. They shut da fuck up.
On the long side of 55 myself (also an O5). Still meeting the Army standard, and a reservist too. Sucking wind but GTG. Not fun by any means….
This particular gem caught my attention after reading it again:
“The 436th Airlift Wing rejected his complaint in a Nov. 21 letter on several grounds: that the equal-opportunity law cited by Cote doesn’t apply to his status as a military member and that the complaint is too similar to a previously rejected complaint from the lieutenant colonel.”
He’s complained before, he’s 56, and he’s on profile for his knees. He’s taking someone else’s slot, why?
What pissessss me off is, we had some of our soldiers get really messed up in Iraq…in one case we were told the dude was going to die from head injuries.
They recoverd, but the injuries took years to revover from and be able to do the full army PT test….so, the Nat Guard started kicking them out. Now, these were soldiers who were top notch and got wounded/ injured in a friggen war!
@30: that’s a sad fact of life in the DoD. The Warriors and those that want to fight can’t stay in and the shitbags cant get out. A modern day Catch-22
I am 56, with several health issues, and I can STILL walk a mile without resting. Hell, it’s about 1.5 miles to my bar and I still can walk there AND back. Well, sometimes I take a cab back, because the walk back isn’t so much the length, but the width of the sidewalk, if you get my drift. 🙂
But still, Jeebus, that ossifer needs to get his man card yanked, and that right quickly.
I’m with OWB.
Eventually, all those little injuries you can ignore when you’re younger start to catch up with you.
When I couldn’t pass the PT test anymore, I put in my paperwork and ‘walked’ out the gate.
The PT test is there to let the old guys know when it’s time to retire.
I’m stuck on it being a mile. Its a mile there bud. I walk a mile every other day to a park track to do my run(two miles), then I have to walk a mile back. This guy should have put his papers in along time ago.
Like an aging athlete… they are an embarrassment. WTF? 50 plus year olds playing Army/Air Force Marines/Navy? Get a life and move on. I read a 70 year old reserve doctor volunteered to go to Iraq. Seems he was too busy as a reservist raising a family and practice and (his words) “Missed Vietnam.” As my buddy (two tours and a DSC) commented… “What… missed Vietnam, was he in a fucking coma?”
For over a dozen years I never took the PT test without a party the night before hangover and MAXed it (thank you “CM” and other instructors for showing an impressionable young soldier the ropes- party the night before PT tests!). Then as years passed, the PT test for some reason, got harder. I started to eliminated the partying the night before so I could Max the test. I guess I was growing up?
It looks like the reserves and national guard is turning into a welfare dole for the elders. As my buddy once said… “19th Group? Oh you mean the White Welfare Group.”
Go ahead and send in the heat rounds (I’ve heard the “so
was 50 and could do “so and so”). Exceptions don’t count (ala Jack LaLanne). Generals/Admirals with their valets, mess stewards, aides, and drivers gets a pass. The others… get out and move on, you are embarrassing yourself and the uniform.
What pisses me off the most about this story is that there’s an officer of that rank who knows he will have trouble with the test, but doesn’t have the guile or the smarts to work around it (like bribing his prt coordinator for instance). What a douchebag.
My last PFT at 42, I still ran a 22min 3 mile and I felt embarrassed that I was getting old and slow.
Hell my buddy Spanky got his leg shot off in Ramadi and stuck around for a few more years until he retired.
@35: Who said anything about Reserve/National Guard?
You know the Reserve/National Guard deploys more than Active Duty?
I have completed 71 laps around the sun with most of them being “on the double”. I hope I never get as old as that LTC, don’t know what I would do then….
That 2.75 mile run, (not jog), that I did on my 70th birthday, while letting my 112 pound dog have the lead would have smoked that dude. So would the 2 mile jog that I did on my 71st, (slowing down to a jog on my birthday, maybe I am gonna be as old as him one day).
I don’t know what job or rating this LTC has but if he was in a very specialized field like removing bullets from a human body. I wouldn’t give a shit how fast he runs if he was operating on me.
#30: “It looks like the reserves and national guard is turning into a welfare dole for the elders.”
Guess again, pal. As a 48-year-old reservist in 2009, I ran the Army 10-miler at Camp Buerhing at a 6-minute mile pace in 100-degree weather. The only thing that slowed me down were the fat, slow, gagging active duty personnel in front of me as I lapped them and jumped over their puddles of puke.
Actually, my complaint about the reserves is that the active duty slugs are migrating over into the reserves because they can’t cut it in the active duty anymore — and the active duty commands are endorsing it! If you can’t cut it as an active duty member, don’t come over to the reserves. It doesn’t matter how old you are, it matters whether you are up to the job regardless of age.
@41 “Exceptions don’t count.” I guess you missed that. Well you are an exception then. As for 45 y/o E-5s and 56 y/o LTCs… give me break. “Pencil whipping” PT tests are common in both reserve, nasty guard and active duty… my call is on the old timers hanging on collecting bucks. I’ll never forget some old-timers (at Bragg with their banjo bellies) talking about how they used to be able to do this and that. I swore that when I got to be an “old-timer” I would not be in that category. “Used to be’s” need to get gone.
In 1973 at Ft. Benning, my “buddy” who was an “old timer” (43 y/o full colonel- Master Paratrooper, Master Aviator, 1st Officer Ranger Class grad-Korea/ Vietnam, 2 Silver Stars, CIB etc.) would run at lunch time- in jump boots with ankle weights. No excuses from slugs. Standards are standards. Maj. Howard pulled some stunts as well.
I was at Ft Kobbe back in the early/mid-80s, (3/5th Inf ABN one of 1stSgt Mars’ misguided kids). We did PT on Saturdays and were (usually) released. Sometimes we would run up to Howard AFB (many readers here know EXACTLY how long of a run that is), around some of their barracks and back. You could tell from the looks there were two types of observers. The larger group was ‘what a bunch of clowns’, the smaller group appeared to think ‘so THAT’S the infantry’. Granted, I wasn’t the most motivated guy some days but I never fell out of a run.
Now that I am about a 203 round away from 50, I still wear a 34″. I really think, had it not been for my hitch, I would not have been able to see my feet since the Reagan Administration 🙂 As my mighty drill once told me “We draw discipline out of you, we can’t put it into you, Mac.” Great guy, I hope the years treated him well.
The LTC should retire now. Because he is NOT a leader, an O-5 should be in shape to pass their PFT, with no excuses. I don’t care what color uniform they are wearing.
Lessee…General James Amos, Commandant of the Marine Corps…age 65 (born in 1946)…still runs (not walks) the PFT…hmmmmm…
From the headlines, looks like I should start training for the 2012 Army 10-miler in Tehran.
The nice thing about mobilizations is that it culls out the “walkers”.
Hey Marvin…he’s in shape. Round is a shape.
Well there was that article not too long ago about the 59 year old MSO (formerly PSYOPS) soldier in Afghanistan, the oldest soldier there. He was actually at the embassy in Saigon in Vietnam to put that in perspective. He still runs the 2 mile in 12 minutes.
I still get the honor of going to the Pentagon gym three days a week to get smoked by a bunch of retired GOs who are a lot older than 56.
[…] LTC December 29th, 2011 A little bird emailed us last night that we should check further into LTC Chris Cote, the Air Force Lieutenant Colonel who filed an EO complaint against the Air Force’s unfair […]