Next Stop....Memorial Day

Day 1 of the zoo known as Spring Track Practice is complete and went pretty well all things considered. Those "things" being the nearly 3 feet of snow dumped on us in February. The district finally got around to doing something about the track on Friday. After skimming the upper foot or so of snow off the track, the weekend sun did its job and we had 5 solid lanes to work with today.

One exception was the jumping area on the left. The picture above was taken this morning. The pole vault runway was mostly clear, but not the jumping area. Boo. By this afternoon, most of the turf was cleared, but there's still some melting to go. I guess it could have been a lot worse...

The other thing about track is I always say, "The next thing you know, it's Memorial Day." I think my fall schedule may give this spring a run for its money, but we've got meets going on just about every weekend starting next week.

I also did a 5k this weekend over on the South Side by the Steelers' practice facility. I had been training a little more than usual in January and February due to some fellow teachers goals to get in shape and to lose some weight. They've been so dedicated and I'm so impressed with them. In turn, our 'Treadmill Tuesday' expanded also to Thursdays. I even got to the point where I did some mile and half mile repeat workouts on the treadmill. Crazy!

So, raceday comes and it claims to be a high of 45-50 for the day. Beth and I get up and it's 18 degrees out. So much for shorts, I thought. But, I pack for three or four different scenarios since I knew the weather was supposed to warm up. We get there and Beth does her long run (not racing since just getting back to 100% from the rib muscle issue) while I go in and get registered and place our tickets in a 'raffle.'

Being sponsored by the athletic trainers in the Pittsburgh area, they've got some bigtime sports connections and had some pretty nice items for silent auction and raffle. Beth and I aren't big autograph or jersey people, but they were impressive:

A signed Sidney Crosby authentic jersey and signed Marc-Andre Fleury Jersey were two of the auction items.

There was a raffle where you could put tickets in to win various prices like a signed Pitt helmet, running gear packages, Market District food package, Rashard Mendenhall signed picture,...., and about 8 or 10 more. You got one ticket with your registration and you could buy more.

Where did I put my ticket? A World Baseball Classic package (baseball of course) that included a bag, hat, shirt, pin, and wristband. Predictably at a running race in Pittsburgh, there were only about ten or so tickets (out of the 200+ runners) in my choice of the baseball package.

Pretty good odds, eh? Sure enough, I won the package at the post-race drawing. There was a kid that came up all mopey hoping he was going to win the prize using the same thought process I did. The hat was a fitted hat and wasn't my size so I gave it to him and it made his day.

Oh yeah, back to the race. It's still chilly as we're (we being me, Chad & Jen H, Doug, and Beth on her long run) warming up and I'm doubting I'm going to be able to wear shorts. Next thing you know, 20 minutes later, I'm not only wearing shorts, but I even shed my hat and gloves into the car before the race. Turned out to be just about a perfect day for racing. Upper 40's, sunny, no wind, flat & straight course, good blacktop surface. Sounds like PR material to me.

My official PR is just above 18:00. Over the last few years, I've split a sub-18 5k in some longer races (some of which were downhill point-to-point so probably cheating), but I've never had a 17:xx by my name for a 5k (not even in HS). So, that was the goal. The conditions were there and I went out with Chad and we were cruising. After splitting 5:16, 5:39, and 6:11 (1.1mi), I end up almost cracking into the 16's with my 17:06! Whoa! Good for 3rd overall (my second ever 'podium'). I'll take it. I guess when I get back in shape this summer (the spring is my off-season with track) I have to adjust my goals to maybe a 16:xx.

So, on to day 2 of track tomorrow and our first scrimmage next Wednesday...

Welcome to March

Whew! February is finally over. That sure was a lot of snow. In fact, it was the snowiest month EVER in Pittsburgh! I'm ready for warm weather for sure.

March definitely turns the calendar in many ways:

*Outdoor track starts Monday. My saying with track is, once it starts, the next thing you know it's Memorial Day. One problem is that there is still almost a foot of snow on the track. We'll have to see how soon that goes away.

*The Olympics wrapped up. What a fun game between US and Canada. Apparently a lot of people are bummed that the US lost and are mad at Crosby for scoring the goal. Maybe just because I'm not a die-hard hockey fan, I enjoyed the game. My reaction of the overtime goal was, "Wow, Sid scored! That was a nice play and a good game." Then, I turned the TV off and Beth and I went out to dinner. Only when I listened to the radio and TV the next few days did I realize that so many people were upset about the US losing. Come on. Could these same people name three guys on the US team before the Olympics started? They were the 6-seed going in and won the silver medal. Sure, everyone wants the gold, but it was a great run.

*Spring training is in full swing and the Pirates had their first exhibition game today. They lost 6-3 to the Yankees. But, I always take spring training with a grain of salt. First, a lot of minor leaguers finish the games, so I always go back and look at what the score was at the end of the 5th inning. Second, I don't look too much at team results, but rather how did do? Finally, spring training statistics don't correlate very well to regular season results. Regardless, I'm excited to be tracking baseball games again.

My Pirates sleepers this season are Lastings Millege, Charlie Morton, and Akinori Iwamura. The flops I'm worried about are the shortstop position (fill in the blank), Zach Duke, and Jeff Clement. I'm encouraged that the bullpen looks stronger and I'm encouraged that there are legitimate prospects knocking on the door (Alvarez, Tabata, Lincoln) not just because the major league team has holes, but because they are actually good.

*March also means March Madness is right around the corner. I've kind of missed the entire season, especially with the Olympics. Davidson's tourney (Southern Conference) starts Thursday. They're the 5-seed, so we'll see how that turns out. The big conferences have one more weekend of conference play and then their conference tourneys next weekend. Penn State has won 3 of 4 (two against Northwestern), but finish with Purdue and Michigan State. Not too high of hopes for them. Arizona is 8-8 in the Pac-10 and tied for 4th. They play the LA schools this weekend and we'll see what happens in their conference tourney.

*Another new thing around here is that there is a new sports station on the air--93.7 The Fan. It's an FM all-sports 24-hr local programming station. I like it because I now have something to listen to when I'm driving down to school at 5:30am to go work out. They're hating on the Pirates already, so it gets me fired up and wakes me up on the drive in.

*I'm running a little 5k this weekend. We'll see how that goes. I'm in better shape than usual for this time of year, but it's all relative since it's still the middle of winter. I've been swimming at least once a week and hitting the treadmill twice a week before school plus the training with the track team and my training with Beth on the weekend. I did a 6x800 workout on the treadmill. That was pretty fun to crank up the treadmill.

Hoping that March provides warmer weather, no snow, and fun basketball and baseball!

Hockey, eh?

If you go back and refer to my sports priority schedule, this time of the year is usually:

1. College Hoops
2. Pirates and Spring Training
3. Penguins

The problem with this is that my three college hoops teams (Arizona, Penn State, Davidson) are still floundering. Secondly, with the Pirates 'plan' coming into view, I'm even more excited about that than basketball. However, the biggest shift is, with the Olympics, there is some viewing there....especially the hockey--men's and women's.

I can't get enough of the Olympic hockey. The US team is making an improbable run (so far) and how about that US-Canada game. The Russia-Czech game from Sunday was great. Canada finally loosened up and they're taking it to Russia (as of the 2nd period at least). Also, I'm really impressed with the US & Canadian women's teams and can't wait to see their final on Thursday.

In other news, I finally made it up to the GaREAT Center in Geneva, OH. It's a 2+ hour drive to get there, but man-o-man is it a nice facility. Wow.


After being up at Penn State and watching Beth compete at the indoor track (and also working as the scoreboard/timing system operator for 3 years), I didn't think I'd ever be in a better facility. Well, I found it. This place is so BIG and amazing. 8-lane 300m oval (with lane 8 being 400m if you'd ever want to do an INDOOR 400m repeat workout). 10-lane 100m straightaways. Two Long/Triple Jump Pits (makes a jumping coach happy). Two High Jump Pits. Two Pole Vault Pits. A large turf football field in the middle. There were 1800 athletes there and it went just as fast as a meet at Slippery Rock or Robert Morris.....at least as quick as indoor meets can go. Double Wow!

We're going up there again next weekend for our district championship. Then, the athletes who have the times will then compete in the state championship at Penn State. Oh yeah. I almost forgot. Our top runner pulled off an 8:47 3000m. Apparently, it's the best time in the state and among the top 10-20 in the country. Not bad for his first race since Foot Locker back in December. He took a few weeks off and then had a minor leg injury. Since then, he's been working out great, but between all the snow cancelling TWO meets and some of his recruiting trips, this was the first meet he actually ran at. Amazing. I'm looking forward to see what he can do the next two weekends before moving on to outdoors.

A neat thing about this facility is that it was completely privately funded and they have also a football stadium, huge volleyball complex, an indoor soccer complex, and an indoor-outdoor swimming complex is being completed. You can check it all out here. One of the neat things of the day was the opening introductions and announcements where the director of the complex got on the microphone and said a few words about how this was a Christian facility and that all are welcome to exercises their faith, whether it would be through saying prayers or reading the Bible. Pretty neat.

So, off to check where this Nor'easter is heading and if we'll get any of it here in Pittsburgh. I've had my fill of snow, so if those east-coasters like Maija want to keep it that would be fine with me.

Happy Pitchers and Catchers Day!

The best four words to a baseball fan snowed-in for what seems like the entire month of February:

PITCHERS AND CATCHERS REPORT

This day is one of my annual 'holidays.' While this may not be so exciting to someone like Marit in CA or people in Hawaii, Arizona, or Florida, those four words bring music to my ears. It means I get to hear about baseball again. It means I get to hear about the warm weather in Florida and Arizona. It means I get to hope, hope, hope the Pirates can at least be respectable (at least until mid-April when reality sets in). It means I can think about my trips in the warm, warm summer (with no snow....and no school) to PNC Park downtown to cheer on the Pirates and Blair County Park in Altoona to watch the Curve and evaluate future Pirates. Yes, today is a good day.

Granted, not much really can be read in to a team on the first day. Heck the position players don't even report until the weekend. Spring training games are a few weeks away. But, it's just the hope and warm thoughts. Also, 22 of the 25 roster spots are already figured out for the Pirates, so it's just a matter of some of the bench guys and relievers. The other entertaining part of the spring is hearing SO MANY players say:

"I feel like I'm in the best shape of my life."

My goal is to try to document all the quotes I read of this over the next month. EVERYBODY'S amazingly in better shape than ever before. Does that translate to a better team? We shall see....

In other realms, the snow just keeps on falling. I had a 95 minute commute home Monday night and a 60+ minute commute home today. I would like to make a request for the snow to stop falling, please.....at least during the afternoon commute.

The past two Sundays I've heard some interesting messages at church that used good catch phrases, so I thought I'd pass them along since they not only apply to one's Christian walk, but just to life in general:

*Consumers vs Contributors: The main focus of the message was to encourage active participation and acting out of your faith. Just sitting in the pews each Sunday and saying 'well that was a nice sermon' doesn't do much for one's spiritual growth. It's about living it out every day, whether that's in the form of serving others or actively pursuing your own growth through reading/music/groups.

This can certainly be transferred to life in general. No matter what activity you're involved in, get involved beyond just sitting on the sidelines. For me at track meets, I like helping out with the events because it makes the day go by faster. Be willing to help out in addition to sharing opinions.

*Trying vs Training: I first heard this phrase a few years back when I was coaching softball during my student teaching days. The head coach was getting frustrated with the team because he felt that the team wasn't getting good hitting results in the game. He felt the reason was that they were going through the motions in drills at practice and, when they got to the games, they weren't able to execute. They could try in the game all they want, but since they hadn't developed the skill sufficiently in practice, they were not prepared to produce timely hits in the game.

The analogy the pastor used was that if you were in the weight room and the heaviest dumbbells were laying on the floor beside you. You could 'try' all you want to lift them and all you'll get is a herniated disc in your back. Conversely, the best approach is if you start with lighter weights, train day-by-day and you'll see your results improve over the course of months and years. I know I need to apply this to my swimming and bike training. I can 'try' as hard as I want in the pool or on the bike, but if I'm not in the water or on the saddle putting in the hours, my progression isn't going to come along as much as I would like.

This is true in your faith, too. You can 'want' to be a better person or 'want' to be closer to God. However, if you don't set up daily disciplines and make daily decisions to put you closer to this goal it's just not going to happen.

So, the challenge for today (perhaps even a great idea as lent begins) is to shift from merely a consumer to a contributor and to commit yourself to consistent daily training versus simply trying.

Happy Pitchers and Catchers Day!!!!

Roxy the Guard Dog

Now that I'm going on Day 4 of school cancellation and all the grading has been done since Tuesday (what day is it?), I've now moved on to finding new ways to occupy my time. Today's objective was to capture the actions of Roxy as the mailman approaches. She does the same routine each day and it's pretty funny.

My favorite part is that her tail's wagging the entire time as she's trying to be a mean dog.

What I Did On My Winter Vacation

We ended up with about 21-22" for our area, and there was more in the mountains and down in Maryland......and there's more (6-10" according to our Winter Storm Warning) on the way Tuesday afternoon/evening into Wednesday.

So, to pick up where I left off with the last pictures:

SNOW, SNOW, SNOW
After I measured out the 18 inches, I decided that I should probably go do something about it (also, the more time I spent shoveling snow meant less time to join Beth for her FOUR HOUR trainer ride). I go to the back of our house to find that our neighbor across the alley had already used his snowblower on our little area behind the garage. So, I proceeded out to the front of the house (wading through 3-4 foot snow drifts) to take care of the front driveway.

The guy in the picture below was so excited about his new snowblower that he decided to take care of our entire street.....literally. He was working his way up the street when I snapped this pic from inside the house. By the time I got out to shovel the front, he was coming back down and offered to snowplow our driveway. I felt bad and told him that I could do it myself if there were any older folk who still needed their driveways/sidewalks shoveled. But, he just jumped right in and his snowblower was top-notch because it plowed through that 20 inches like it was nothing.

I felt bad that I hadn't really shoveled anything, so I followed him down the hill and we dug out a car that had been left out on the street from the night before. We dug out one other car and he decided to call it a morning. So, on to the trainer for me.

I ended up riding 90 minutes with Beth. We had the movie Duplicity (Clive Owen, Julia Roberts) from Netflix, but it was tough to follow and pretty slow-developing. So, 45 minutes into it, we shut it down and went back to the good old reliable Law & Order. I finished up a little early and prepared the ingredients for our 2pm chicken burritos for lunch/dinner.

Also Saturday afternoon, I expanded Roxy's roaming area in the backyard. Saturday morning (at 5am---why can't dogs sleep in!!!), I carved out the right rectangle that connects our back porch to our garage via the sidewalk. Saturday afternoon, I could tell that Roxy wanted more 'space' so I expanded off the left side to create a Figure-8. This way she could run a round like a crazy dog and not run out of space (not to mention more places to take care of business).

At some point Saturday night, our back alley was plowed, so we were able to get out to church on Sunday. (Had it not been plowed, we would have been able to get out of the garage, but would have ran into a 2-3 foot wall of snow for about the lengthof 5 houses to get out of our alley). The message was one in the series about change. The theme for this week was shifting from Spectators to Contributors--to get off the sideline and to make a difference with your time.

WORKOUTS
We went did a short run and then went over to the YMCA where Beth did some aquajogging (still healing up those rib muscles) and I swam. Every month or two I'll swim a 1650yd to see how I am progressing as a swimmer (remember, I slowly evolving from embarrasing to merely a slowpoke). My rationale for doing the 1650 yesterday was that we were a little tight on time, so I figured if I didn't stop at all, I could get in more yardage!!!

Over Christmas, I had some suggestions to improve my form from a handful of people including Beth, Chad & Jen H, an old lady swimming in a lane beside me, and a lifeguard. I definitely noticed in January that my interval times had improved and I felt a little more efficient going through the water. The big observation by most of the people was that the way my arm was going into the water, I was creating more drag and actually slowing myself down (never a good thing!!!). So, I figured I may do okay compared to my past 1650's. However, I had some things working against me:

1) I hadn't swam in 10 days due to the way my schedule played out
2) I was really sick in the middle of this past week and hadn't worked out much this week
3) I shoveled snow for a couple hours Saturday morning and then joined Beth for 90 minutes on the bike
4) I had just run for 30 minutes prior to going to the Y

Nevertheless, off I went after a 150 yd warmup. I ended up swimming 31:53-ish and beating my previous best by almost 40 seconds. I figure if I keep improving like that, I just need to swim 15 more 1650's to be as fast as Beth...that's how math works, right? I'll just be happy for the day when I can get under 30 minutes. Slowly but surely.

SUPER BOWL
On to the Super Bowl. I didn't really have a team I favored. There were compelling reasons to root for both teams. I'm really impressed with Peyton Manning and how he's a coach on the field. I enjoy watching Colts games when they're at home because the crowd's quiet and you can hear all the directing and motions that Manning does. Here's a great article on Peyton Mannning's character and charitable side. Also, the Colts' punter is Pat McAfee. He's a Pittsburgh guy and WVU grad and actually was a senior at the school that I student-taught at.

Then, you also have the Saints and Drew Brees. Just the fact that the Saints are still in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina is amazing in itself. Drew Brees is also a great story. Given up on by the Chargers because of shoulder issues, he went to New Orleans and became one of the top passers in the league. On top of that, Drew Brees is a great character and he was on the cover of the most recent FCA magazine called 'Sharing the Victory (STV).'

The bottom line, I told Beth, was that I just wanted a close game that came down to the end. They definitely delivered and, had it not been for an aggresive cornerback and Wayne's slight slip out of his cut, the game may have gone to overtime.

MORE WEATHER
Today, we had school cancelled and it turns out that school is also cancelled for Tuesday. With this impending storm coming Tuesday night, I'm not sure what's going to go on Wednesday either. This is definitely throwing a wrench into my plans for the week. But, you adjust and make do. While we'll make up these days in June, they're after finals, so you lose the instruction time.

It's kind of funny how the roads are here in Pittsburgh are. As you can see below, around our house the roads are clear and dry for the most part.

But, if you head down closer to the actual 'City of Pittsburgh' it's a lot worse. Here's a photo slideshow from the local paper. I drove in with Beth this morning to drop her off and it took TWO HOURS. The roads looked like they hadn't even been treated all weekend in some places. And these were main arteries. So, more snow on the way and we'll see how much we get this time--if it's actually 6-10 inches or a whole lot more!!!

Stay tuned!!!

18 Inches and Counting!!!

Looks like we ended up with a little more than 5-8". No problem. We weren't planning on going anywhere today.

We lost Roxy!!! All I see is her tail!!!

Picture of Roxy in her "channel" I dug out for her in the back yard. Looks like she's preparing for a World War I reenactment of trench warfare.