Track workout

I have decided to post the history of my "newspaper career" over at The Shy Man's Life, since this blog is intended to be more of a "what happened today" page than the "chapters of my autobiography" page. Not only does the story include some things you may not know about the newspaper business as it was in the 1970s, but it also explains my connection to Jim Ryun (the phenomenal miler of the era), and includes a mysterious and bizarre murder. Seriously. I'll let you know when I get that story posted.

As for here and now, I shall continue the accounting of my daily experiences (boring, sad and pitiful as those may be). Friday's "track workout" shall provide today's entertainment.

Well, OK, that's a lie. The only entertainment you could possibly get out of my track workouts would be the amusement factor of seeing all the pitiful flaws in my running form...or perhaps the chuckles you'd get from seeing my younger brother run circles around me. (Hint to all younger brothers & sisters everywhere: let the older sibling win once in a while. It's just good politics for family harmony. Right?)

Anyway, I met Pat at the track after work on Friday evening. Thanks to some judicious self-medication, my knees appeared to be moderately functional. I was toying with the idea of timing a mile, to see if I could break the 8-minute barrier.

Yes, I know that an 8-minute mile is about the same speed that zombies move during a quest of brains. It's the speed of lava, of Garrison Keillor's storytelling, of Jabba the Hutt on a Sunday stroll. In my younger days, an 8-minute mile was the speed I'd go during warmup...if I was carrying Orson Welles on my back. But now it's a speed I aspire to, hope for, and can only achieve if the planets align, the wind blows favorable, and the drugs have kicked in.


Pat wanted to do some shorter stuff, so after we had each warmed up, I left him to measure his sprint distance while I made my attempt at the mile. The good news is that I did indeed run a mile, and that the total time for covering the distance was indeed under 8 minutes. The bad news is that I wasn't able to do it all at once. I started out OK, but my left hamstring suddenly went on strike, causing me to involuntarily shorten that leg's stride. From that point on, my running form probably looked like a cross between the Lindy Hop and being tasered. I did not finish a mile.

Meanwhile, Pat was over on the other side of the track tearing off some blazing sprints. After some stretching, I tried one of the shorter bursts with him, but when he finished as I was barely at the halfway point, I knew that sprint speed wasn't in my cards for the day, either. I jogged a couple more laps and decided that was enough. Pat agreed.

After we run, we've been playing catch for a bit. I seem to have misplaced my mitt during my last move, but Pat let me borrow his wife's glove, just so he can work on his pitches. And just like the differential in our sprint speed, his arm speed is approximately double what I'm capable of. He throws much harder than I do.

He catches better, too. And ever since Mark Dotzour hit me in the eye with a fastball when I was in third grade, I've been reluctant to stand there and let people hurl baseballs at me. So here we are -- a timid guy with slow reflexes and a borrowed glove, trying to catch sliders thrown by an enthusiastic bodybuilder with minimal experience regarding pitch control. Wanna guess what happened?

No, not that. And no, not that, either. Most of the time I was able to either catch it or get out of the way. Most of the time. But it only takes one.

I know that a pitcher probably appreciates the solid "whap!" sound of a high-velocity ball smacking into the recipient's glove. The person doing the catching, well...probably not so much. The good news is that I can still type. I won't be able to open jars for a while, though. The index finger on my left hand is quite tender, and will be for quite some time. I suspect there's a hairline fracture, but it's not bad enough to cough up a copay for, so I guess we'll never know for sure. But I think I'll look a little harder to find my own glove.

And if you have some catcher's gear you're not using, let me know. Thanks, and have a great day!