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Thanks John!

Today marks the first day I ran 2 laps around my neighborhood, straight, with no breaks. Early in my training I was trying to keep my heart rate below 150 so I constantly stopped to walk in order to get it down. My experienced triathlon and runner friends said that was plain wrong. The right way was just to run or jog really, really slowly. My problem was that I was in such piss poor shape that I still couldn’t get my rate down.

I took two days off and ran tonight. My goal was to run straight through and more or less ignore my heart rate. Well, I did it. My pace is still a week bit slow, 11:44 minutes/mile but at least my heart rate was steady and I stayed at it. Hopefully as I train more my heart won’t have to work so hard.

My goal for the end of May is to do four laps around the block, which will equal about 5.74 miles, mostly what I need to do for the last leg of the triathlon. Would be nice to get to the point of being able to do a half-marathon by the end of June but that’s not really where I should be focusing.

I’m not worried about the biking. I still need work at my swimming. When my coach makes me do drills like “make fists” I tend to have a hard time at it. Still, I mostly feel strong in the water as my being more or less overweight seems to matter less there.

I am going to try and do the same 2 laps tomorrow and take off Friday.

(The picture is of my short run back to the bike shop)

I was all set to do a good 30 miles on the bike today and try and run 6 miles. This would have been more or less 2/3 of the triathlon I’m working towards in July. But, fate and the realization that I still have a lot of training to do stepped in.

About 8 miles into my ride, I saw some kind of cable was blocking the road. I really mean blocking. It was on a residential street, but a busy one that runs parallel to the Long Island Rail Road tracks. The cable had fell down, perhaps some tacks holding it to the pole fell free and it hung limply from one pole to the side of a house across the street. The base of the wire hung about four feet off the ground. Multiple cars swerved sharply around the hazard as it was a really dangerous situation.To make a long story short, I stopped another rider from riding into it (they definitely did NOT see the wire), called 911, waited for the cops to show, and then went on my merry way.

I went another mile and noticed the end of my headphones were dangling against the spinning spokes on my tire. They were like this because I have an iPhone and I use it for phone calls and music. Figures. If I had two separate devices I would have been fine. For some reason, the built-in mike attached the standard iPhone headphones don’t collect my voice so I have to pull out the jack and use it like a regular cell phone. Bummer.

Back to the dangling… as I gathered it up, I failed to notice a bit of a pothole and my bike slammed into it. My back tire went flat. It’s a road bike so the tires don’t like to do much other than spin. It’s times like these when I miss my mountain bike. I had no spare tube nor a tire repair kit either, so I huffed back about 1.5 miles to the local bike shop where I had the tire fixed for $16. I also bought a few things that will help me fix this if it happens again. This is knowledge I’ll need and today’s ride was a good wake-up call.

I had basically run out of time so I had to call an end to my workout. The rest of the day was spent doing yardwork and playing baseball with Marco and Antonio.

My son Antonio has been playing baseball for the past few years, probably since he was 5. He always loved the game, loved being around his friends, and loved to have his mom and dad cheering for him in the stands.

Being 8, he’s entering into his fourth season. Like most kids, he started off with tee-ball and had a ton of fun every time he took the field or swung the bat. In his second year, the coach would stand half-way between the pitcher’s mound and home plate and lob easy balls. At that age, kids had a hard time swinging the bat properly. It didn’t matter, though, everyone got up to bat and everyone ran to first base whether or not you made contact with the ball. Then came the pitching machine. Scary as it was for the wee ones, the machine was predictable and the kids always had near-perfect pitches to swing at. Antonio did well and couldn’t get enough.

Antonio happily agreed to sign up for “fall ball” which is a smaller session played in the fall. Our coach said that they wanted to give the kids an early taste of real pitching, pitched by the little leaguers themselves. This way, they got a taste of crazy pitches before the spring season. It was here where Antonio began to lose hope. Game after game, Antonio struck out. Sometimes he watched the balls come and go, not knowing if they would be called strikes or balls. He would often be sent back to the bench, having been too afraid to swing even once. Pitching was an equal challenge and often he had to endure long innings where the opposing team scored half a dozen runs before his teammates scrambled to put three outs together. Or worse, the coach pulled him because he was so upset. These were dark days and by the end of the season, Antonio had called it quits.

As parents, we were faced with walking that line between forcing him to continue and encouraging him. We listened to him damn the sport for the rest of the fall and into the Winter. But we knew he loved the game. Then, our coach called us up and said there was a Sunday morning clinic starting in the winter. 8 or 10 sessions every other week at 9am. The coach knew of Antonio’s fears and basically ignored them. Together we sold the clinic to Antonio as simply a place for fun and games and a chance to see his friends over the weekend.

Week after week, Antonio had fun with the fitness and baseball drills. He got one-on-one instruction on fielding, batting, and catching. By the end, he decided to give baseball one more chance. Still, I could see he was fearful and it broke my heart.

The time came for the first game. Antonio was happy to be with his friends and he held his own. In the bottom of the last inning, Antonio manned first base. Baseball ready, Antonio waited for the batter to make his move. The play began with a crack and the ball sailed into right field. Such a strong hit would normally yield an easy double. But right-field was manned by our best player who gloved the ball on the first bounce and fired a rocket right at Antonio. Out at first.

Game ball.

“These aren’t the girls that you’re looking for…”