Softball Weekend and WDW Questions.

I had a great weekend. My daughter’s team played 7 games of softball this weekend in a fast pitch tournament. I will talk a bit about 3 of the high point games.
The first day we beat again one of the toughest teams in our division the Comets. They are all older girls in the 2nd year at this age. They are stronger, and more accurate and they 10 run a lot of teams. We have ended up beating them twice now and I think it is something to do with the coaching on their side. They come out with a pitcher and shut us down and then think they have us. They change pitchers and we come back and then the energy turns and it is too late. Always fun to pull a win like that.
Another team is local to here and their primary goal as stated by them is to beat us. They don’t care in a scrimmage or a tournament but they want to beat us. They had their chance yesterday. We would work and get 3-4 runs ahead of them and then we would make errors and they would be right back in the game. Now the 1 hour and 15 minute game time has expired. They have last at bats and the game is tied with no outs and they have the winning run on 3rd base with another girl on 1st. They are to get their wish it seems and beat us. All that has to happen is 1 missed pitch past our catcher and they will score the winning run. My daughter is playing second base and the batter pops a fly ball up my daughter catches it and tags first and then runs at the runner at 3rd holding her on base and not scoring, thus an awesome double play. We then get the next batter out at 1st pushing the game into overtime. We come back and score 9 runs on them and end the game. They still have not beaten us.
Onto the next game against the Extreme our nemesis. The Extreme get beat 10 runs by the Comets and yet we can’t beat them. What is up with this? This is the team we can’t seem to beat. And once again we fell to their great defense. We need to install some confidence in our girls somehow that this team is no different than any other and that they can beat them. It will come in time just as the Blue Jays did to us last year and we finally beat them in the State Tournament to take 1st. Maybe we will have that same kind of finish this year.
I have only had one person ask any WDW questions. I texted cubed and got your answer just as I promised. At first Cubed reported he wore a red thong, he saw a hint of a red thong strap pulled up high over his slight love handles but after watching for a while and searching for a new angle he got the true answer. What he did was send his youngest child in to get Sleepy’s autograph. While the poor innocent child keeping Sleepy busy with a few questions about the other Dwarves , Cubed slipped up from behind and saw that there was no thong strap and that Sleepy goes commando. Way to use your kids as a distraction to get is this information Cubed!

Review Time and WDW Fun Time.

Running is still hurting. I took today off to try and get some feeling back. I will run again Friday and Saturday and try to get a couple of 6-9 miles shots in those days. Right now I keep getting encouragement to run but my body is still saying you idiot for running a marathon you get to suffer.
I received my 1 year review at this new company. It was a great review and they have again changed my title. My boss will be sending out an email soon that will define more of what I am to be I the department. According to her I will be the Systems Administrator and take on more of a leadership role in the IT department. She has already begun within our group to state that I have the lead when she is out of the office to cover any issues. I think I have proven myself and she trusts I will make the right decisions for the company. I don’t plan to let her down on that either.
It was also noted in the review that she was happy I was working here. This meant a lot to me. Considering coming out of Addroc where the owners treated you like a piece of crap and really for the most part didn’t care if you where there or not. Wait don’t take that wrong they wanted a person there to control and manipulate they just don’t care who that person is. It could be me, Smarter or any other person as long as they had control is all they cared.
We had a small laugh here in the office the other day. I reused a spreadsheet I had used at Addroc to track computer inventory. There was a left over sheet in there that tracked the exact monitor to the person and desk it sat on at Addroc. The people in the department that is taking care of that sheet here now asked about it and when I explained its purpose for the previous company everyone laughed. They didn’t laugh at me but at the stupid reason the owners of Addroc gave for needing that kind of stupid control.
I noticed that Cubed (Smarter) is actually not at his desk much today. I think he is in la la land already dreaming of the Magic Kingdom. I am thinking next week of texting him a few times to see where he is at or on what ride he is standing in line waiting for. If you would like to know or ask him a question please comment to me and I will try to fit it in and let you all know in a post. I also thought he was a bit harsh on you Dumbass and you should have been able to go with him. Lol
One more thing to comment to me on. Do you watch HEROS on NBC? If so any thoughts on the final episode? Cubed and I are hooked on this show and talk about it often. Comment your thoughts on the show we would love to read them.

She was right.

Ridiculous chick you’re a genius. I was thinking of going for a small run today and found this on Hal Higdon’s Post Marathon training. There is a whole 4 week schedule to come out of the marathon mode that you can find here http://www.halhigdon.com/postmarathon/zeroweek0.html
“After the Marathon: Generally, it takes a minimum of two to three weeks for the body to recover from the strain of running 26 miles 385 yards. Return too quickly and you increase your risk of injury. Some experts suggest resting one day for every mile you run in the marathon, thus 26 days of no hard running or racing! Others suggest one day for every kilometer, thus 42 days rest. Often the determining factor is not how quickly your body recovers, but how quickly your mind recovers, since you temporarily will have lost your main training goal. Olympic champion Frank Shorter says: "You’re not ready to run another marathon until you’ve forgotten the last one."”
So I am already beyond what I should be doing so I guess I will cut back a day and start going back in slowly. I think I have also decided that I might want to run another marathon at the End of September so that means I am only about 2 weeks out from beginning the whole training schedule again. I was going to program in my calendar the needed runs but I am going to wait till the end of May and then look at it again.
OHH and I am still waiting for my free lunch from Cubed. I am thinking Friday would be a good day???

The Pain Continues

Continue the pain. Monday I woke up and headed to work. I soon found out I was still a hurting unit. I could barely navigate stair taking them 1 hobbling step at a time since it felt like I didn’t have enough strength in my legs to push myself up each 7 inch step. Going down was like letting a muscle loose and felt like I was going to fall with each step.
The great people I work with all tried to help in any way they could. There is a refrigerator on the second floor of our office with drinks. One guy that works in my area made a couple trips up the stairs to get me drinks when I needed in an effort to keep me from using the stairs. I found though that I needed to move even with the soreness. If I sat at my desk to long muscles would tighten and then I could hardly move when I stood up so I tried to get up and do something every 20 minutes if not just a short walk.
Tuesday was much better. I was sore but able to move around with a lot more ease. I think I am going to live. Wednesday now came and I felt like I had a body back. I know now you need some time to heal after putting your body through that much. In the mean time I received a lot of emails from running friends congratulating me on completing a marathon and telling me that I should be very happy with the completion and the time meant nothing. The BIG picture is doing it.
Friday came and I decided to try and do a small run. My friend came to my house at noon to accompany me on my first run after. She told me wait a week, wait 2 weeks doesn’t matter the first runs will be sore and tiring. We did 3.5 miles that day and it was okay but labored. The best part is she gave me a card telling how proud she was that I did the run with a small sticker in the card that simply was a circle with 26.2 on it. I put it on my truck in the rear window to display I am now part of the 26.2 club.
I went and got a small 5.5 mile run with the club on Saturday morning, did 4.2 miles on Sunday morning and did 5 miles this morning. I thought that each day this would get a bit easier and that I should be doing these distances with no problem. I seem to be missing something here though. It feels like I have never run before and that I am struggling to even complete these short distances. What is wrong?
Am I still working out lactic acid from the marathon? I have run these distances a bit faster in time but still not at the speeds I was running them. I am at a loss at the moment to why this is so hard. I feel like I have started over with my running. The only part that has been good is with the warm sun shining on my runs I have been able to pull my shirt off and start working on a tan for the time I am out running. There got to look for a bright side of things.

I am a Marathoner!

Well as some of you know I have been since January training for my first Marathon. Yes, the fat nerd decided to try a marathon. I hope to describe now for you some of the journey of pain.
For some dumb reason a couple years ago this cute young gal kept emailing me to come and run in her running club she had started in a local health club. I went and started running with the club which at first was basically a bunch of women and me running 2-5 miles. The group over time changed though somehow and is made up now of very good runners, and me. To show this a bunch of them went to AZ to run a marathon and 5 of them qualified and went and ran the Boston Marathon this last April.
Well when you begin running with this kind of group the runs go up in length. A weekday run is always 5 or miles followed by a normal weekend run of 10-13. Watching them and getting up to these distances starts to make a person think and usually not for the better. So I ran my 1st half last November in 1 hour 42 minutes. Hey this isn’t so bad and thus when the New Year turned I decided, AGAINST my better judgment to try a marathon. Yep, I got hooked on adding Marathoner to my list of titles and achievements of life.
Training went well for the most part with lots of changes with scheduling and injury problems. I think I respected the mileage but not the training part as much as I should have. I thought that I missed this training but I am still ahead of this other training schedule so I will be okay. Next time I will take my training a bit more serious. That said I don’t think that had I trained the full course the right way would have made much of a difference to this marathon. I’ll explain.
I for the last 6 weeks have been fighting a cramping problem in my right calve. In the end I missed a whole week of training including my last long run I was supposed to do. I ran the hill half I wrote about last time and then the next week went into leg cramps again. I ended up not running at all for the last 10 days before the marathon, and getting a massage to try and work out my legs. As I was told I was in the 50% of all people who train for a marathon and get injured and do not get to run it. That was quickly becoming me. Another piece of motivation was the free lunch Smarter had offered me if I completed the marathon. I can’t miss out on a free lunch. I can’t be a quitter, and hungry.
Well I decided to give it my best shot and I could always quit during but I could not have the chance to finish if I didn’t at least start the race. I awoke from a sleepless night at 1am and got out of bed at 3:30 am. I headed out and loaded the bus to be taken to the start line at 4:15 am an arrived at 5:30 to which my friends were shocked when they saw me get off the bus.
The race started at 6:15 with the caution of start out slowly and pick up speed at the end OR start out fast and they would pick us up along the way. I was good and started out slowly. I passed the 5 mile mark where my wife was at making sure I was doing okay with my injury to which I was doing great. She was interview by the local newspaper at that point which was a cool thing. I saw her again at the 10 mile mark and all was good. As I told her all systems are a go I will see you at the bottom of the canyon. Yes, I said canyon this race is run all downhill. Easy you think let me tell you more.
I crossed the half point, 13.1 miles, at 2 hours and 5 minutes. I had done well I was on track for a 4 hour marathon and with pain and the distance later 4:30 was in my sites. I was happy and all was going as planned, but that was about to change. There was over 700 people that started this race of that around 100 did not complete it and I know the reason.
It hit me around mile 16 at the bottom of the canyon heading out into the flat part of the course. The 16 miles of downhill took its toll on my quads and they began to spasm. About a mile later the hams began to contract into cramps followed by the calves. I would be trying to jog some and the cramp would hit and my leg would not go forward. I would stumble and come to a halt without falling. What was I going to do and where was my wife now that I was failing. Well she could not get a place to park there and went another 2 miles down the road. I walked, limped and hobbled onward all the time wondering what I was going to do. Ohh wait there goes a really cute girl, can I keep up with her for a while. OUCHHH, NOPE!
I finally rounded the road and reached the part where the race turned onto a river trail. There was my wife cheering me on but I was limping along tears rolling down my face from the pain, and frustration I was feeling with my body quitting on me and my time evaporating, my hope of a marathon sinking fast. I hugged on the way by and kept going as she said my kids and parents were just up around the next bend.
They were there and saw me coming. They walked along beside me and a huge cramp hit my left leg. It was the kind that had me standing on my toe winching in pain that ran down my hamstring from my buttock to my ankle. As I stood there gasping for air, tears again rolling down my face trying to light take another step forward my mother started looking for a way for dad to help me to the car and she was telling me, no more like ordering me to stop I was done and the race would be here another day. My hopes of the marathon and the free lunch we gone. I would not be able to make it the last 5 miles like this. Well my mom is not of the best walking ability and even in my hobbling state of pain I was still out walking her so I continued as best I could and the cramp relieved. I waved a good bye and crossed under an overpass in the road on the trail and continued with the vitamin water my wife handed me.
I poured the new drink into the bottles on my fuel belt and was walking along when a biker came along and yelled I got your trash and took my bottle. He asked if I needed any water or help to which I declined and he peddled on down the path. Other runners that caught me at this point offered encouragement that walking would still get me there and to try to stretch at times to relieve the pain while still moving.
I now reached about 1.5 miles out from the finish line. I am still cramping cringing at times in pain at other times trying to scuttle jog along to help my time to the finish when I happened upon the cute gal I mentioned above. Her friend she was running with face planted on the trail and was puking. The paramedics were there hauling in stretchers to get her out and I heard she could not even answer her name. She was out for the count. OK, I thought I might be in pain, crying like a baby with both pain and emotions gone awry but I was not out for the count. I continued.
I turned around the final bend for the last .2 miles of this 26.2 miles journey of hell. Again I met my mother who was also crying watching me finish, my father who grasped my hand as I went by. I mustered the last of my pain reserves and began to run. I finished my first Marathon in 4:56:45. I met my goal to finish, not in the time I wanted but they tell you your first marathon is to finish time comes later. What really matters is I am now part of an elite group with the title of Marathoner.
I was pretty much out of it the rest of the day sleeping on the couch and crawling up the stairs to my bedroom to die in bed. My wife and kids were AWESOME supporting me throughout the run and are proud of my finishing under such circumstances. Will I run another one? Right now the answer is no, halves yes, marathons no. BUT you know if the course was flatter to what I trained I think I could beat that time. Hmmm if I complete another marathon does that move me up the list in eliteness?
For now though I just want to know if anyone saw the truck that hit me yesterday or where Smarter is I want that free lunch, ohh and I am now a MARATHONER!