Catching up

Lots of catching up to do here - although i'm not really feeling like i'm in the writing mood, so i'll just give you a few highlights and random thoughts.

I've somehow become a weekend warrior. My coach had put 11 hours of workouts on my schedule this week, which is definately manageable. However, over 7 hours of it was scheduled to take place only over this weekend. It started out with a 5 hour (Yes, that's 300 minutes) bike ride on Saturday, followed by a 13-14 mile run on Sunday (a little over 2 hours). The purpose of these workouts is to build my endurance for the NYC marathon that is 4 weeks from today. These workouts aren't hard in terms of intensity - in fact, I have to keep my Hearrate below a certain range so it ends up being slower than i'm capable of - but it is tiring. And after covering about 85 miles through running and biking in a 24 hour period, especially in these unseasonably warm weather, i'm feeling sore and worn. Someone died running the Chicago Marathon today - the course was 90 degrees - I really hope we come into more seasonable weather in these next four weeks because the heat kicked my butt on my run today and that was only half the distance.

I know Jenna wanted me to talk about this - Philadelphia sports. I just don't know what to say about the Eagles - with the exception of slaughtering the Lions, we've played just awful. I don't know what happened to the offensive line during the Giants game - Donovan got sacked I don't even know how many times...seriously, it wouldn't surprise me if the stats were double digits for sacks. And we got KILLED on penalties - I think by the end of the game we had racked up at least, if not more than 100 yards of penalties. It's just ugly. They're still my team - i'm not a fairweather fan - but I will be pissed during the season if they keep playing this way - and I reserve that right.

Phillies - what an amazing few weeks it has been. They really turned it on at the end of the season, and to take the NL East on the final day of the season was spectacular! I was running up West River Drive during my long run and all the cars heading Westbound on 76 were honking their horns with their rally towels waving in the wind - we had alot of hope going into the postseason. How could you not love this team? Howard, Utley, Victorino, Rowand, Rollins, etc. - so much personality and lovable characters on this team. They've made it very exciting to watch them and I greatly enjoyed spending much more time at Citizens Bank Park this season. This is the team that ran onto the field in Colorado to help the grounds crew with the tarp during a rain delay (i'll post a video of this later).

The Division series hits, and our bats went silent. I don't know what happened. It was shocking and disappointing. Oddly, i'm not devastated - because this team gives me hope. I feel like this is just a precursor to succesful years to come. 2009 is going to be a good year for Philadelphia sports - not saying that nothing will happen in 2008, but my gut is telling me that something big is going to happen in 2009.

I want to talk about work and school - my brain is constantly in overdrive thinking about this aspect of my life. I come to different conclusions everyday - this is something i'll blog about in more detail later.

On a side not, I went down to Cape Henlopen with my team last weekend as many of them competed in a triathlon there. I wasn't allowed to do it - it didn't fit in with my training schedule for the NYC Marathon - but I still wanted to go and cheer my team on and I looked forward to being an official volunteer of this race - see what it's like from the "other side". All I have to say is I GREATLY enjoyed getting to bodymark some very nicely toned, hard male triathlete bodies. :)