Lovely Weather!

I can handle this weather--highs in the high 70's and lows in the mid 50's. This is super! Can we arrange it to stick around until April?

What does one do with this weather? Work out, of course! The training's coming along quite well. I'm happy with how things are going and the balance I'm able to strike between my training, the XC team's training, and Beth's training. Sunday, I had a time trial of sorts. The prescription was 16 miles with 12 miles at marathon pace. I did the first three miles with Beth and then went off to run my marathon pace. Shooting (hopefully) for a sub-3:00 marathon in Philly, I wanted to hit around 6:45 pace. About 3 miles into it, I thought, "How exactly am I supposed to hold this for 26 miles!!!!" But, sure enough, the 12 miles finished and I ended up around 6:35 pace. Mission accomplished.

I then did 70 minutes on Monday with the XC team and felt pretty good. Today, they had a meet, so it was a rest day for me. By the way, boys & girls both won the double-dual meet against Bethel Park at Kari's alma mater USC (Take that Kari!!!!!!!!!...of course just kidding). Back on Saturday was the first invitational of the year. Our guy took #1 and looked great! The rest of the team looked a little tentative and rusty, but that was their first competition against anybody but themselves. I'm confident based on their workouts, they're going to do better than that between now and October.

The Pirates are just plenty woeful of late. I think they're something like 11-34 since their big trades back in late July. Ouch. They're losing every which way. One day they pitch good but don't score any runs. The next day, the pitching isn't good. The next day it's the relievers. Ugh! You see hope with Andrew McCutchen and Garret Jones. I can't believe Jones is still hitting .300. I became a believer when Beth and I went a couple Saturdays ago. He had three singles (and two walks) and most impressive two of them he just went with the outside pitch and served them into left-center. Most power hitters are really pull-happy and would strike out in that situation. Not Jones. That's why he's still hitting .300. I just don't get why he couldn't get out of AAA with the Twins.

With the Pirates and their plight, I'm getting my playoff fix with their High A affiliate, the Lynchburg Hillcats via internet radio. They won their first round best of 5 series in an exciting game 5 and were anchored by the much beleaguered Bryan Morris. It's fun having a rooting interest in meaningful baseball. I find myself hanging on every at-bat and every pitch. It's fun! Now, they're in the finals against the Salem Red Sox. Salem and Lynchburg are just 90 minutes apart and it's a big rivalry in those parts. Back in the day when Beth and I were at Virginia Tech, we went up with our church group to Salem and saw the (then) Salem Avalanche (Rockies system) take on Lynchburg. The game went like 16 or 17 innings on a Saturday night and we stuck around for the whole thing. Needless to say, we were all a little sleepy the next day at church.

Back to the Lynchburg game and some odds & ends to get ready for school and more enjoying of the beautiful weather! Update: Hillcats win 5-4 with a walk-off homer in the bottom of the 9th!! They're now up 2-0 in the best of 5 series.