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
@#47…reminder to self…don’t read this blog while eating or drinking. Almost drenched a keyboard at work with diet Pepsi.
Has anyone here read what the 56 LTC wrote? It doesn’t seem like it. All he’s saying is for the walk test if all factors are exactly the same(walk time, weight, heart rate, gender)then a 26 year old would get a much higher(better) score than a 56 year old. Where is the fairness in that?
The option might be to make it illegal to be born young? If everyone was born 22 years old and forced to remain at that age, then it would be fair – is that what you’re saying??
Y’all quit picking on him.
He’s a low-speed, high-drag kinda guy, he can’t help it.
How are we going to pick on the whole Air Force cause of one dude. Kind of messed up. I remember having a mulit force fitness competition. Between marines, air force, army and navy and air force won 4 out of the 6 competitions. So just saying.
The problem that he’s talking about is that the formula used for the walk test is flawed.
http://athletics.wikia.com/wiki/Air_Force_Fitness_Test_and_Age_Discrimination_(one_mile_walk)
basically if he was younger with the exact same Height, weight, pushups, situps, and walk time and he would have scored higher.
We have a 37 year old guy here who just took the walk test because he is on profile after tearing his Achilles tendon last year. He failed the test but would have passed with the exact same results as a 30 year old.
The formula is flawed. The scores dip down everywhere from 9-13 points within the 10 year brackets. I have seen 9 point difference for men and up to a 13 point for women. All things the same (female), a score of 89 at the age 30 declines to a score of 83 at the age of 35, and is reduced even further to a 76 at 39 but as soon as 40 hits the score is back up to 89.25. How can the same effort end up with up 13 points difference from one year to the next? Personally, I don’t think the formula was meant for specific ages but to be used like on the run in the 10 year bracket. If they did that there wouldn’t be a dip that gradually increases within the bracket. If you notice in the story, they always talk in the baseline bracket age … 20, 30, 40, 50 but not the difference with the between ages. If you just look at those there is no dip but once you factor in the years between it goes wrong. I understand the hostility regarding meeting standards but when the standard shift dramatically, it is a little hard meet, especially if you don’t know about it.
Bet he could double time to the chow hall.