Crazy Busy Baseball Day

Alright, based on the zero comments left on my last post I'm guessing that I may be the only runner out there shaving just one knee for taping purposes, and perhaps most or all of you find this somewhat objectionable. If so, I apologize, but this is a running blog and, good or bad, what comes from running gets posted on here.

That being said, here is a recap of my weekend:

Saturday: Rain Rain Rain, and so no baseball. No running either, but that's only because I wasn't planning to run anyway!

Sunday: Oh man, where to begin... I think bullets are in order:

• This day started off with me coaching my 5-Pitch Softball team in the league Quarter Final at 8:30am. We'd been rained out on Wednesday night and all day Saturday, so that explains the early start. As the second-last team in the standings we were playing the second best team, one that had only one loss the entire season (and that was to the #1 team, which had no losses at all). First inning we were down 7-4. Second inning the kids played awesome and we ended up tied at 13-13. So, given the tight schedule we were off to extra innings, and therefore setting the whole jammed schedule back even more to the delight of the Convenors. Third inning, we were still tied 21-21! Now the Convenor said, "OK. Play one more inning, but this time it's one-pitch." (This league is 5-Pitch, meaning the kids get five chances to get a hit, and so the kids now had to hit the first offering or go back to the bench.) We ended up scoring 3 runs on a total of 11 pitches (we had 11 kids playing and they all get to bat in each inning), the other team was shut out. We were off to the Semi Finals!
• After this one-hour game that took over two hours to play I jetted off back home to get my long run in. By now it was hot hot hot and I was about to head out at 11am for a 18km run under the full Sun. The notes on this are below.
• The Semi Finals were less dramatic and we romped to another unlikely victory. Owen, my son that is, hit a grand slam home run to power our side right to the Finals!
• The Finals were played right after the Semis and the kids were gassed. We put up a great fight by lost by three runs to the #1 team, which was still undefeated. Congrats to them, and a big congrats to my team of kids. They were amazing to go from second last all the way up to runner up! Lots of great memories for all.
• Then it was off to coach the Rookie Selects team at another park. This league is made up of the best players from the House League and quite competitive. We play 7 innings and the game took us to nearly 8:30pm, finishing my twelve hours of crazy baseball for the day. I finally would get to go home and eat some dinner!

The Run: Like I said, this was a hot run and my body responded accordingly. The beginning was kind of kinky with my legs feeling tight, but after a couple of kilometres I was loose and feeling great. At about 5k I started to drink from the bottle of Gatorade that I'd brought along and would take a few sips every two kilometres. This worked quite well for me and I was cruising along nicely. My heart rate was elevated, up into the 150s and 160s BPM but I was still able to test whether I was running easy by singing the ABCs. Weird how the heart rate was so high and yet I felt easy?! Then, with about 5k to go, I started to really hit the wall. From this point on it was a mental struggle just to keep going. With 4k left I'd taken the last of my Gatorade and stopped off at a washroom for a pee and to fill my bottle with water. As I started back into my run for the last 4k I felt really super gassed. I also kept a keen eye on my watch because the Semi Final game was going to leave me just enough time to shower. I figured I could ice my knees in the car on the way to the game (which I did). By the end of the run I had also finished the entire bottle of water. Like I said, it was HOT out.

In the end I managed 18km in 1:40:42 for an average pace of 5:35/km (8:59/mile). The average heart rate was 159bpm, but this was due more to the heat than the pace, which I kept on the easy side. It was great to get this run in, but I think the heat is something I will have to watch out for. Early morning runs will be the way to go if I can manage them.

Garmin don't lie.