I started this post yesterday afternoon while I was bored at work but then I actually got a lot of work that had to be done before the end of the day so the post got put on the back burner and eventually was deleted because I wanted to go home.
So, this is a new and improved post, which will also talk about the crappy run I had this morning. But first, to the topic of the original post.
Some months back (maybe March or April) I started this blog as a tribute to my favorite baseball team, the Washington Nationals. As some of you might know, the Nats are pretty bad this year. Not as bad as we’d all feared going into the season, but bad nonetheless. There’s no way a team can sit at the bottom of their division from the beginning of the season to the end and not be considered bad. Nonetheless, I love them and always will.
I started the blog to talk about the Nats on a daily basis and to share my limited baseball insight with the Internet. But, blogging about baseball is almost as demanding as blogging about politics. There’s so much going on on a daily basis that it’s nearly impossible to miss a day and stay current. And with the team playing 165 games, it can be overwhelming. IN early June I took up running (on a regular basis) and wanted to create a running/training diary of sorts. Rather than create a new blog and waste a few more megabytes on some server in California, I decided to kill two birds with one stone: transform my neglected Nationals blog into a less neglected baseball/running blog. And so this is how “All Nats, All the Time” transformed into “Me, the Road and Baseball”, if only for a few short weeks.
As the summer has gone on, and the Nats have remained pretty bad and not showing any signs of improving, I stopped watching as many games as I could. I occasionally check SI.com for the scores or see the scores on ESPN. And all of my posts have been about running. Eventually, there was little reason for having a baseball/running blog when baseball is never spoken about in the posts. So, I have decided to transform my blog one more time. I’ve moved it from “Me, the Road and Baseball” to the mysterious, yet important-sounding “Baltimore Running Project”.
So, here it is: the revamped website that’s all about my running and training. I’m going to try and make this better, but my HTML and web skills are fairly limited and I’m not about to pay a fee to have my site hosted and to get a few more bells and whistles. Because really, I want this site to chronicle my trials and tribulations rather than to be the electronic essence of myself.
But I hope whoever stumbles across this site enjoys it and gets some limited insight into what a beginning runner goes through.
Now, on to the second portion of this post, which is less happy. So ever since the Run to Cooperstown two weeks ago, I’ve been struggling to find a balanced training regimen that fits well with my weekly schedule. I’d like to run 5 days a week and take one day for cross training and then one day of pure rest away from the gym. It’s harder than I thought to find this magic combination. Let me quickly explain:
Running in the morning is great because I can get the miles in before work and then I have my evenings free to cook dinner and relax. I also feel better when I get to work. The cons of this are of course getting up much earlier than I’d want to, and the limited amount of time I have to dedicate to running. It’s this second reason that is becoming a real sticking point. By the time I get up, get dressed, arrive at the gym, warm up, actually run and then cool down and stretch, I’ve spent more time than I planned. When I run for 30 minutes, for example, the entire ordeal takes closer to an hour when all is said and done. And if anything delays me (i.e. oversleeping or, like this morning, my headphones breaking) I’m screwed. What’s more, I have to be at work at 8 AM so I can get several tasks done before the trading day begins. As a result, I have to be up at 6 AM so I have an hour to run, get back and get ready for work. If I didn’t have to be to work until 9, it’d be fine, as I’d have two hours to run. So, I’m crunched for time in the mornings.
Running in the evenings is nice because it’s a great stress reliever after work and I can take all the time I want to get as much distance or time as I’m aiming for that day. It’s only marginally busier than in the morning. And sometimes Annie and I can go together in the evenings. The cons are mostly time-oriented. Sometimes I get out of work later. So, if I’m out of work by 5:45 PM, I can maybe make it to the gym by 6:15, which means I probably won’t get home until 7:30. Then I have to cook dinner, clean up, shower, get ready for the next work day, and get ready for bed, all before having any time for relaxing on the couch. The advantage is that since I can sleep later in the morning, I don’t have to go to bed until later at night, so I get more time on the end of my day rather than the beginning.
In both cases, time can become a problem. I haven’t been totally satisfied with either running time, but I think there’s no real solution except to pick one time and make the best of it. Even though I like running in the morning, I think looking at it objectively, running after work might be better, especially as my mileage increases. Eventually (hopefully), I’ll be running long enough distances that simply having 40 minutes in the morning won’t be enough. At that point, being able to go to the gym or out on the road for more than 60 minutes and not have to worry too much about time will be nice.
For now, I’m going to go to a spinning class with Annie tomorrow morning and then do a long run out to Fort McHenry on Sunday morning. Next week I’ll run in the afternoons and see how that feels.
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