Week in Review & the Week Ahead (9/19/16 thru 9/25/16)

This was a pretty successful week for running, although I made several adjustments to the plan as the week went along. This was more to do with planning for the weekend schedule than anything else. All the data (distances, times, paces, weather, whatnot) are on my RunningAhead log.

Tuesday (9/13/16): Easy run, 5 miles. My legs felt fine after giving them the full Monday off after the race on Sunday. On Monday, I contemplated going for a run, but forced myself to stick to my plan, which was definitely the right decision. In the past, I have made the mistake of overtraining and then getting injured to one degree or another. I'm determined not to do that this time around. 

The run felt good and I ran the entire way, which was great. Weather was nice and dry and much more fall-like, which was good. The pace was a bit too fast for what I would like to see when I run "easy", but that's OK. I made the mistake of not having a snack when I came home before heading out to run, which meant I was really hungry the entire time. Reinforced that as I get faster or simply run longer distances, nutrition will be a bigger factor. 

Wednesday (9/14/16): Hill repeats 6 by ~400 meters. A solid workout, as I tried not to strain too much and run so fast that the later repeats were slow and low quality. I had a snack before going out and that helped a lot. I also had some chocolate milk when I came ba

Run to Remember 11k Race Strategy

This Sunday is the 15th annual Run to Remember 11k/5k. I've signed up for the 11k and am really looking forward to it. I don't remember if they've always done the two race distances or if this is something they started recently, but I like it. I've run the 5k a couple of times in the past, and have enjoyed it. I'll write up a full race report after the fact on Sunday or Monday, but the main thing I wanted to outline was my general plan for the weekend and for Sunday.

After jetting over to pick up my race packet after work, I'm going to slog through the heat and humidity to get a 5 mile "easy" run in this evening. I took yesterday off, and intend to take tomorrow as a rest day as well, so even though it's awful outside (feels more like mid-July than early September), I got to get that run done. That's the bad news.

The good news is that it is supposed to cool off considerably by Sunday, but I'm willing to bet the forecast will be slightly off, and it'll still be really humid and steamy come race morning. This may actually be advantageous, as I've been running outside in this horrible soup for a couple months now, while a lot of the runners on Sunday will have been indoors on the treadmill, making for a very terrible wake up call. The race doesn't even start until 8:45, so it will likely be in the high 70's by then and should feel like the mid 80's with the humidity.

My plan is to go out slower than I think is fair, at least for the first 2-3 miles, for a couple reasons. First, this will ensure I don't flame out by mile 5 or 6 so I can finish strong. Second, it'll be very

Labor Day Weekend Training Review

It's now Sunday night, and with the bulk of my Labor Day weekend behind me (sadly), I thought I'd review how the main part of the training went. I still have a 4 miler scheduled for tomorrow, but that shouldn't be a problem. My real test was Saturday's 10 miler. So, how it go?

Thursday's 5 miler was uneventful. The weather was pretty cool, although not as cool as Friday and Saturday turned out to be. But still, much more comfortable than the usual Baltimore late summer weather of the Three H's: hazy, hot, and humid. My only slight concern was that I felt a little tenderness on my right shin, which I was worried might be the beginning of shin splints.

Friday's 3 very easy miles also went fine and my shin felt fine, which was a relief. I've been running in new shoes for the last week or so, and I think that will end up helping a lot, as my old shoes had many hundreds of miles on them and were several years old. The short run was perfect to keep my legs from feeling too stiff on Saturday, while also not over-taxing them before the long run. 

Saturday was the real test of the weekend. First time I have tried to hit double digit miles, even if it is under LSD run conditions. But it was a highly successful run and I'm very happy with how it went. I actually started the run at Ft. McHenry, which meant driving to the park and doing an out and back route. But I wanted to vary up my routes a bit so the runs don't get boring.

Flamed Out...Like a Boss!

This weekend, I'll admit, I fell off the wagon. I suspect many runners go through this sort of post-race drift. Where your body is no longer as exhausted and tender as it was the 24 hours after your race, but your mind remains in a stupor.

I ran a few times last week, but nowhere near to the schedule I had set for myself. I kept saying, "Well, another day won't hurt. I need tor est. I'll get my long run in on Saturday/Sunday and it'll be fine." The same could be said about yoga, which I skipped on Thursday. Thursday was also my wedding anniversary, so it was a convenient screen to cover up my own laziness. In the end, I went through this weekend having logged 5 measly miles, versus the 15 I had aimed for, plus the Sunday morning yoga class.

But, like I said, I think that's to be expected somewhat and I'm past the point of beating myself up over it. Instead, I chose to re-focus on this week of training. This morning I got out for my usual 4 miler, but made the rookie mistake of trying to run it hard, which was dumb. What's worse, I KNEW it was dumb as I was doing it. Yet I continued on anyway. Needless to say, I flamed out in fine fashion on the return trip up to Mt. Vernon, although my overall time was still completely fine. So, I probably won't do that again for a few months...I hope. But it felt great to get back out, and the unseasonably warm weather (it's nearly 80 here today) made the dark pre-dawn run less painful. January's runs won't be so enjoyable, I think.

Training for what, you might ask? Well, nothing quite as singular as a half marathon, although I'm going to keep my eyes out for a half sometime after the first of the year...maybe in DC, we'll see.

No, between now and December 31, I'm focusing on some shorter races interspersed throughout the holiday season. The next likely candidate is a 5K in Charleston, SC, where my family is meeting for Thanksgiving. My uncle as rented a house on the beach near Charleston, and the $30 entry fee, coupled with the proximity and flat course, should make for a good race. That's about a month away.

After that, there's a 5K up in Towson called the Man Cave 5K, that looks fun. It's partially sponsored by the Big Screen Store (sells ungodly large TVs, recliners, and obesity), so some of the door prizes include a huge TV, recliners, beer, wings, etc. I have no hope of winning an age group prize, of course...but I'd take a free new TV that would be way too big for our apartment. I've not signed up for this race yet, though. Still tentative.

I did register for the 2012 Celtic Solstice 5 Miler on December 15. It's a great local race, and the typically bitter cold weather keeps a lot of unserious runners away. Not that I'm some hard core runner, but you get fewer walkers out there when it's 8:30 AM and below freezing. You got to REALLY like to run to do that to yourself! The way the registration works is they open it up to runners who want the race premium, which is usually a really nice shirt or, in recent years, a jacket. It's nice, but they also charge $65 for the race for those folks. To each their own...those entries help keep the non-premium entry fee low for the rest of us, so who am I to complain?

However, historically you've been able to register for this race without the premium, which makes it really affordable. As in, it used to be $20 for a well-organized race with a nice post-race spread. Now, it's $30, but that's still a nice bargain for this race. As it got more popular, they instituted a waiting list for this option. Usually by mid-November, they'd open it up to the waiting list and you could register for the lower price (sans premium, obviously). I've always done this, as I just want to run the race. This year was no different; I registered for the  wait list way back in August. Last Friday, they sent the first 100 people on the list an e-mail with a password to use on Active.com to register early before they opened the race up. So I went ahead and registered on Friday to secure my spot. A. has no desire to run this race due to the cold weather, so she didn't register.

Beyond that, who knows? We're spending the final week of the year in Cincinnati, so we'll probably seek out a race while we're out there as well, but that's well down the road. For now, I need to make sure I get up tomorrow and get to the gym to re-start my dormant interval training routine!

The Half Marathon Approaches...

This past weekend was the second to last weekend before the Freedom's Run Half Marathon and I was slated to complete an 11 miler for my long run. I've had to be pretty aggressive with my mileage ramp up the last six weeks or so, as I procrastinated too much back in July and cut my plan short on the back end as a result. I would have liked to have had a couple extra weeks to get a handful of 10 and 11 milers in and then have hit 12 miles this past weekend before "tapering" somewhat in the final weekend.

But, my laziness made that an impossibility, so I've had to add a mile per week to my long runs. The rule of thumb is to add no more than 10% of your total mileage to your long run per week, and back in August, that limit was definitely exceeded as I tried to get beyond the 6 and 7 mile range. It hasn't been optimal, but I've avoided any serious injury like runners knee or the like. The worst I've had thus far are some minor tweaks early on. But since I started practicing yoga, those aches and tweaks have started to disappear, which is great.

Anyway, the 11 miler went as expected. It was tough, as my legs are trying to adapt to mileage that is growing a little too fast. I again went with the GU tabs. This time I had four gel blocks after about an hour and then the last two about 20 minutes later and that seemed to work well. My legs were really aching going into the 7th mile, just like the previous week, but the four gel blocks gave them new life and the additional two blocks made them feel almost fresh going into those final few miles.

Because I was going far this time out, instead of wearing my simple Timex wristwatch, I charged up and took my old Garmin Forerunner 305 that my parents got for me way back in '07 when I first got seriously into running. I mapped my run on Running Ahead, as always, and it came out to 11 miles. But the Forerunner said I ended up running just 10 miles, for some reason. I did go off course at different places, but not 1 mile's worth, to be sure. It was hard not to go off course around Patterson Park, given my relative unfamiliarity with those smaller streets. Check it out:

But, the reason I generally stopped using the Garmin in the first place is that it tended to lose its satellite signal when I was running through downtown Baltimore due to the skyscrapers. So, I'd get wacky pacing and elevation data for portions of my run. And even then, sometimes it would lose contact and not reestablish until I was well out of downtown, which may have happened here. I haven't installed the Garmin software on our new PC, so I can't go back and compare.

Nonetheless, I know I ran 11 miles, no matter what my Garmin might insist.

This weekend I originally thought I would try to hit 12 miles, but now I'm wondering if I should bring it back to 8 or 9 to "taper" in a limited fashion and not exhaust my legs less than a week before the race. We'll see how I feel as the week goes on. It'll probably be a game time decision on Sunday morning.

In other running news, looking at my monthly totals since I got back to really trying to consistently run, my distance is increasing nicely. July 2012, the first full month of getting back, I ran just 38 paltry miles (see discussion about my laziness and its impact on my training program now, above). August saw a nice improvement to 49.3 miles. But the real success was September, when both my required distance and motivation increased. Last month I logged 74.5 miles on the roads, which is very encouraging

Double Digits

This weekend marked the first time in a long time that my weekly long run reached double digit miles. A. and I both completed 10 milers this weekend out on the NCR Trail and it felt good to realize that although I'm not setting any land speed records, my body can handle the distance.

The run was about as good as I could have hoped. My goal was to keep to a roughly 10:00/mile pace and I got within a few seconds of that. Although I felt like my first 5 miles were slower than my second half. But that too was by design...I was afraid of going out too fast and then flaming out before I made it back to the car.

We both went five miles north and then turned around and came back to the parking lot at the trailhead we chose. The parking lot was already full when we got there around 9:30, so we had to park on the shoulder. But the trail was not that crowded with bikers and runners and walkers spaced out. In fact, once you got about 3 miles in, between parking areas, it was generally empty.

So I was able to keep a decently steady pace throughout and with the nice, dry weather, I wasn't laboring that badly. This week I tried out the GU sports drink tabs (one tablet in 16 ounces of water), and decided to eat 4 gel blocks rather than the three I did last week. The drink worked out well, although it's a little more bitter than the homemade Gatorade powder mix. Which is saying a lot because the powder doesn't have the extra sugar you get when you buy Gatorade (or any sports drink) in liquid form at the convenience store. The taste wasn't terrible though, as I like a slightly more bitter taste; too sugary and my stomach hurts. And it was definitely superior to just drinking water. I just had water last weekend for the 9 miler and despite the gels I still felt sluggish from the lack of salts as the run wore on. Sunday, I felt better, especially in those final few miles. Going with four blocks was also a good decision, as it gave me a little more energy to finish the run.

The biggest challenge of the run was simply the pounding my legs took over the ~100 minutes. This is something that I think will get better, but never really go away. I focused on maintaining something akin to decent running form throughout the run, which I think helped. But my legs definitely started to tire by around mile 6 or 7. By mile 8, they were hurting and by the end, I was in straight up pain. Few things felt better than sitting down on a bench after finishing the run.

The good news was that while I was sore the rest of the day, the aches and tired leg feeling were both gone by yesterday morning. No lingering pain of any sort, even after walking to and from work yesterday. This weekend is 11 miles, so the ramp up continues.

Everyone is Running Downhill Except Me

So, turns out that the men's Olympic marathon was on Sunday and not Saturday...who knew? In the back of my mind, I thought Saturday was not the right day, but I plowed ahead anyway. And within maybe an hour I realized I was wrong, but really didn't feel like logging in to Blogger and changing the post, etc. So, my bad. Somehow I doubt it made much of a difference.

But, for those who didn't blindly follow my post and not visit any other Olympics-related website the entire weekend, Ugandan Stephen Kiprotich won the gold medal, claiming that country's first gold in the marathon in 2:08:01. Silver and bronze were claimed by Kenyans Abel Kirui (2:08:27) and Wilson Kipsang (2:09:37).


However, American Meb Keflezighi came in fourth after being as far back as 19th around the halfway point in the race. That's a fantastic finish for Meb, who is 37 and was the silver medalist in Athens in 2004. He covered 26 miles, 385 yards in 2:11:06. Here's an article on Runner's World about his race. These were his final Olympics, and I'm happy to see he went out on such a positive note.

Anyway, this weekend saw some wonderful weather here (for August, of course), and I completed my 5.5 miler under a cloudless sky in high 70s temperatures and low humidity. The sun was intense and it was definitely toasty in the sunlight versus the shade, but compared to some runs earlier in the summer, it was nice. I ran around the harbor and down into Federal Hill/Locust Point before turning around and coming back up into Mt. Vernon.



As you can see from the elevation chart above, the route has some decent elevation changes and the final mile or so is all uphill as you climb from sea level at the harbor up into Mt. Vernon. But I swear every time I ran uphill, I passed several other runners going downhill. But then when I was running downhill, I never once saw anyone else running uphill in the opposite direction. More than once I was trudging uphill only to be passed by another runner cruising downhill at warp speed. They ran almost effortlessly as I seemed to drag myself up the side of a mountain. Yet I never got the reward of feeling (mistakenly) athletically superior to those poor saps heading uphill as I glided, as if on two little clouds instead of shoes, downhill. "Well, everyone's a freaking Olympic marathoner when running downhill," I kept thinking to myself. Yet that didn't take away the indignity.

OK, maybe that's a bit hyperbolic, but still, when you run up a hill, you want SOME form of instant reward. "This will pay off in October" only does so much to take away the burn of the lactic acid in one's legs, you know. At some point, one needs to see someone else suffering a little to take away that sting. Yet on Sunday, it seemed I was stuck in some sort of runner's punishment where I run uphill and a.) it always feels awful and b.) never run downhill and feel satisfied that someone else is suffering too, which makes the next uphill feel more awful.

But, them's the breaks, I suppose. And really, it will all be worth it come October. Right?

B'more Stinks! Literally.

So it was a sparse posting week, but work was hectic earlier in the week and, as you can tell from my training log, I got a little off track over the weekend. And the stress at work made it even tougher to get out of bed in the morning and on the road.

And it figures that the earlier part of the week saw some decent weather, temperature and humidity wise. And that now that I'm back out on the road, the heat and humidity has returned with a vengeance. 

Anyway, the run this morning was a pretty typical three-miler. Luckily, the humidity hadn't really cranked up yet, so it was pretty comfortable. The one thing I noticed this morning was the summer Baltimore stink was more pronounced. As anyone who lives and runs in a city knows, the summer heat brings out the various smells and odors of an urban environment that you just don't get in January. This morning, I was treated to the following smells. 

1. Stewed garbage from a city garbage truck. I shudder to think about the awful brew that ferments in those trucks in the 100 degree heat.
2. The smell of a new adhesive bandage, amplified by 100 times. I don't know what caused it, but it was strong. 
3. The distinct, and deeply unpleasant smell of crap. Not dog crap. Person crap. Again, I didn't see any immediate cause (I think we all know what I'm talking about here), but the smell was unmistakable. It was right around an Irish pub on my route, but usually one gets the typical odors of stale beer, old cigarettes, and the occasional urine or vomit. You know, your run-of-the-mill eau-de-frat house. Crap is aggressive, even for this bar. 

Actually, because I ran an out and back route today, rather than a loop, I got to enjoy all these smells twice. Wonderful. October can't roll around quickly enough.

Running in Geologic Time

Nobody reading this blog, whether on purpose, after losing a bet, or through the black-box algorithms of a misguided Google search, will be surprised to learn that running in the early morning or late at night during the summer is the way to go. Baltimore and Washington in the summer tend to become roiling concrete kilns with oppressive humidity mixed in for good measure. Of course, folks living in Florida or Arizona or elsewhere in the Deep South or Southwest will say, "You think you're hot? Just try living in Orlando/New Orleans/Jackson/Flagstaff in July!" To which I say, you're probably right that it's worse there than here on any given day from June through mid-September. But that's the point, right? Many of us have to deal with the heat and running in some fashion. Really, when the temperature goes above 85 (arbitrary number), you're dying on your run whether it's in Boston or Birmingham.

To that end, I present this screenshot of the Weather Channel's forecast for Baltimore for the next five days:

For Baltimore, that's absurd. The 108 high on Saturday is particularly crazy, because the tropical humidity has arrived, which could make the heat index go somewhere around 115. 

All this is by way of saying that running early in the morning is a must for me these days. There was a time, a brief time, an Age of Lunch Running (in the geological meaning...as in shorter than an epoch, period, era or eon), when I thought running during my lunch hour would work great for my schedule. Wrong! Turns out it takes more than an hour to change into running clothes, get outside of a skyscraper, run, cool down, come back to the gym in the office, change, shower, put work clothes back on and get back to my desk. Which didn't work.

Moreover, while lunch running is fine for winter months, once you hit May, it's terrible until late September around here. Much of Baltimore, you'll be shocked to learn, lacks decent tree cover, especially downtown. So you're in the direct sun at the hottest part of the day. At first, it was a bit of a badge of honor to run in such hot conditions. Nobody else was out running and it felt like the summer corrollary to running in a snow storm in January or a downpour in April: you're a hard ass! Right?!

Wrong. Stupid. And wrong.

The hottest day I ever ran in reached 97 degrees (gross of the heat index); it took me a day to rehydrate and my body was sluggish for two days. Terrible idea and it was the beginning of the end of the Age of Lunch Running.

Now, I prefer to run before work for both climatological and scheduling reasons. I prefer to be done with my exercise early so I don't have to motivate myself at 5:30 PM after working all day to do it. The Age of Evening Running was even shorter than the Age of Lunch Running and never really got off the ground. I much prefer the quiet, largely car- and pedestrian-free streets of Baltimore at 6AM, in addition to the cooler temperatures.

Currently, I am in the early years of the Second Age of Morning Running. If I can maintain consistent running, I think I have a real chance to get it to an epoch eventually. 108 degree days will certainly help me keep motivated to wake up at 6AM when it's a cool 80 degrees, as it was this morning.

Thaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaanks

So, I have begun to make some super awesome upgrades to my blog, which I’m sure all of my loyal readers (thanks Mom!) have already noticed. Before I unveil all the awesomeness that has been going on in the last hour, let’s recap since our last episode.

Thursday was an off day, as I was exhausted, per usual, from the week. Running three days in a row and also actually going to work and doing one’s job takes it out of you. That and staying up too late most nights. Anyway, Thursday I did no activity at all, which was nice. Friday was supposed to be a regular running day, but because of chores (laundry, paying bills, etc) and crappy race organization, that went by the wayside. Let me explain.

So, as you may know from my previous post, I’m running in the Bay Café 5K tomorrow. I’m excited to get another race under my belt and I can’t wait to see how much I have improved on my time from back in July. However, as readers of the past post will know, the whole air of this race is the classic “too cool for school” idiocy I’ve come to expect from most things in Canton. If you don’t believe me, go to the previous post and click on the link to the Bay Café 5K website, peruse it and then come back to this post and continue reading. If you don’t find it mildly annoying and arrogant, and at least agree with my feelings on some abstract, yet tangible level of principle, than you probably live in Canton or go to Towson University.

Anyway, the website makes this race sound like the most awesome-est race in the Mid-Atlantic and that if you aren’t running on Monday, you might as well kill yourself because you’ll never be cool and will never get laid the rest of your miserable dweeb life. This, in a nutshell, is the essence of the Bay Café as well. A crap-hole of a bar that serves overpriced swill to yuppies in training with usually sub-par music to accompany it. All wrapped in a veneer of coolness that barely hides the circle-jerk mentality that pervades the whole establishment.

Knowing this as I do, I was sceptical when I saw that the first opportunity to pick up our race packets was on Friday from 5-7PM at the Bay Café Happy Hour. Not wanting to get screwed out of another T-Shirt (I still have yet to get my Run to Cooperstown shirt!), I wanted to get my packet ASAP. So, after work, I went back to my apartment, got my keys and drove over there through holiday weekend traffic. It took me 20 minutes to drive 3 miles. Then I got there and the bouncer (yeah, they have bouncers at this place, and the balls to have a cover charge!) says, “Oh, the packets were never dropped off here. We don’t know why,”

In the words of Bill Lumberg: “Thaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaanks.”

So I drove over there for nothing. I wasn’t really surprised or even angry. If anything, it only reinforces my opinion of the Bay Café as a place for the flotsam and jetsam of my age group to congregate. So, that shot my Friday night.

Yesterday I was going to do my long run, but had to cut it short because Annie and I had some errands to do in the afternoon. No big deal, really. I got 4 miles in instead of 6.5 and will go and run another 3 or so this afternoon to keep the wheels greased for tomorrow.

Anyway, the changes to my website! Where the countdown to the Great Strides 5K used to be, I have placed a countdown to the Bay Café 5K. Of course, after tomorrow, the Great Strides will be the next race and its countdown will be restarted. Don’t worry.

Secondly, I have started a list of some of the running blogs I read. This list is incomplete because I have some of them saved on my computer at the office and can’t remember their names right now. I have my fantasy draft for the No Talent Ass Clowns on Monday afternoon, which I will do from the office rather than here at home (my office is a 10 minute walk from my apartment so no worries). I’ll add the other blogs to the list then.

You can check out my training schedule and log at Running Ahead (www.runningahead.com). It’s a cool site where you can track your workouts, courses, races, records, even your shoes. Very cool and worth looking at.

And finally, I have added AdSense from Google to my page in a vain attempt to earn millions of dollars through the Internet. So, if you like, go ahead and click on the ads at the bottom of this page 30-40 times for me. I think I get 1/2000th of a cent for each click. I’ll be swimming in gold like Scrooge McDuck in no time.

Into the Lion's Den

When I thought up that awesome title for this short post, I thought back to that NBC show with Rob Lowe that was just one of many desperate attempts by NBC to recapture some of that West Wing lightning in a bottle. I never saw an episode of the show, mainly because it looked terrible and clichéd. But also because Rob Lowe killed his own career (again! As if his 80’s foibles weren’t bad enough) when he left West Wing and the character of Sam Seaborn behind to become Dr. Vegas. God that show sucked too.

Since then NBC has been reduced to peddling “Heros” which is like X-Men and Lost, but not as cool and twice as contrived. Or “My Name is Earl,” which is not funny at all. Sorry. Oh, and let’s not forget “Deal or No Deal”, possibly the worst hour of TV to come along in the last 15 years. The show’s concept is worthless. There’s no skill involved whatsoever. It’s based on the same concept as Russian Roulette: pick one thing out of an ever smaller number of things and hope it’s not the worst thing you can possibly imagine…like a gunshot to the head. Besides that, the show is FAKE! It’s not real at all and everyone, from the contestant to the audience, are actors. Worst kept secret in crappy network TV.

Anyway, back to baseball. No incredibly enlightening post tonight as my girlfriend and I are going to see the Blows play the Blue Jays. Every Tuesday they offer half price upper reserve tickets and we figured, eh, why not? After the collapse of the Nats last night, I’d rather watch the Jays spank the Blows around for a few hours and then catch the Nats highlights on Sports Center anyway.
And yes, I was being sarcastic when I said that this post’s title was awesome. It’s unimaginative and dumb, much like the majority of network television. Which is why I got my TiVo today! Woo!

A Closed Letter to the Blowrioles Fanbase

Dear Howard County/Dundalk Resident,

Your team is not good. In fact, they stink. Oh sure, I know you’re immediately laughing it off and saying that Washington stinks too. That we have the same problems as Baltimore: bad hitting, a bad GM, a pitching crisis, etc. And I won’t disagree with you on the whole. But, we both know that the Blows, dollar for dollar, are a mess of a team and organization.

I realize that our teams are only similar in their geographical location. In fact, I don’t really see the MLB-imposed Beltway Battle as anything more than a nice way for MLB to make a weak-ass attempt at bringing more people to both RFK and Camden Yards. I know that most Blows and Nats fans share this feeling. This is the most similar that the teams are going to be for the foreseeable future, so enjoy taking heart in our pitching troubles, hitting troubles, and ownership bungles. It won’t last forever. Oh and please don’t forget that your hard earned dollars that you spent for those overpriced tickets, Blowrioles jerseys, midget-sized $5.50 beers, and that mediocre (at best) Boog’s BBQ went to pay for a team with a $93 million payroll and all of 4 more wins than the Nats.

“Well at least we’re 2nd in our division” you say. Yes, that may be true. But look at your division. You’re 10 games back from the Red Sox (who utterly embarrassed you last Sunday…or did you forget that travesty of a ninth inning?). The Sox are probably the best team in baseball. The rest of the AL East, however, is up in the air. To this point, the Yankees have not played to their potential. They’re so desperate they gave The Rocket $28 million and their first borns to pitch for them. However, you and I both know that won’t last forever. At some point, the firepower that $195 million buys will come back and then the Blows will be in third. Let’s not forget the Blue Jays, who ran you right out of Canada last week. The Jays are just one game behind you and guess what, they’re coming to town tomorrow! I may just have to go to one of those games to see the pounding in person. Luckily, that only leaves the Devil Rays, the perennial 5th place holder in the AL East. They’re still bad, so you’re saved from finishing last. Congratulations. You’re destined for a fourth place finish…again. I admire your consistency.

And need I even discuss the ownership? The Dark Lord of DC area baseball is still trying to get MLB to pay him for allowing the Nats into town. I guess noone likes to see their inflated attendance dwindle to pathetic levels. I mean, who’s going to waste money on that crappy BBQ? That’s in addition to the complete train wreck of the front office. Having the Dark Lord micromanage the team doesn’t help either. So, to recap: greedy, ambulance chaser for an owner who’s more concerned with squeezing every penny out of the gullible fan-base then with building a solid organization from the farm system up (have you seen the Frederick Keys? They oscillate between mediocre to bad effortlessly).

And the Nats? Well, we stink too, don’t get me wrong. Our pitching rotation is like a house of cards; one strong gust of wind and it’ll all come tumbling down. But the difference between the two clubs is expectation. The Nats were never supposed to be good this year. That’s because everyone in the front office from the owners down to our manager, understood that there is a longer-term effort going on here. Could we have signed some big names (Hernandez and Soriano come to mind) to help the cause this season? Yeah, but it would not have made a marginal difference. We were always destined for the bottom of the NL East. The difference between the Nats and the Blows is that there is a system at work here. Sure they’re last this year, but it’s so in a few seasons we’ll actually have achance at winning the division, pennant, maybe even the Series. The Blows are just trying to finish third, and have been trying since 1998 just to get above .500. Playing not to lose is always a good strategy.

So don’t be too happy with taking the series this weekend. Each game in the series was decided by one run. Much of that was due to the excellent pitching by the Blows and Nats alike. Which only serves to highlight the spirit of the Nats rather than the Blows. The only “starter” who pitched in the entire weekend was Jason Simontaachi. Everything else was pitching by committee, essentially. And still there were no blowouts. Even today’s game was a one run nail-biter.

Personally, I can’t wait for the series here in Baltimore. I’m interested to see how things go when our starters (unpredictable and unstable as they are) are back and maybe, just maybe, Nick Johnson will be back and ready to airmail a few balls onto Eutaw St.

Sincerely,

PMW

P.S.: The whole yelling “O” during the National Anthem is lame. Everyone outside of Bawlmore is laughing at you because it’s so lame. That and the John Denver “Thank God I’m a Country Boy” song. “The Wire” and “Homicide” were based in Baltimore so singing about living in the country is laughable. Sing that stuff out in Dundalk or Westminster.

Inaugural Post (a.k.a. why I'm a Nats fan)

After much hemming and hawing and procrastination, I've finally gotten around to creating a blog for my favorite baseball team, The Mighty Washington Nationals. As a life-ling resident of the Washington-Baltimore area (grew up in a town about 90 minutes outside DC, went to prep school around DC, now live in the lovely Charm City), it was always a choice between the Orioles or nothing. You either loved the O's or you were a baseball orphan. It was a terrible choice thanks to Peter Angelos and Major League Baseball. But that's another post for another day.

My family, despite being pretty much equidistant from DC and Baltimore, has always been firmly entrenched in DC sports. We're Redskins fan for football season (a tough row to hoe, let me tell you) and Wizards/Bullets fans for basketball (go Agent 0!). We aren't really hockey fans but if the Caps win, I'm content. Baseball was always the sore spot with us. While I never hated the Orioles, per se, they were never a favorite team for me. In fact, I was more than happy to root for the other team whenever I went to an O's game, regardless of who it was. That dislike only got worse as the O's continued to try to spend with the bog boys in their division. It's not that they don't have the $100 million a year to spend thanks to rabid O's fans, but the long run of incompetent trades and acquisitions (the Sammy Sosa idiocy is just the first instance that comes to mind right now) pretty much insured Baltimore a paltry last place finish in the AL East until Major League Baseball felt sorry enough for them in the same time frame as their decision to expand the League to Florida and the sorry Devil Rays were born. The constant resistance by Peter Angelos and his band of merry owners to bring baseball to DC finally soured me to the Baltimore baseball way of life.

Sure, the O's have a great baseball tradition. I mean, it pains me not to be able to really root for the team of Jim Palmer, Earl Weaver, Eddie Murray, Brooks Robinson, and the Ripkens, just to name a few. But the core of the organization is rotten and decrepit. Angelos finally lost his battle to keep his stranglehold on the DC-Baltimore region with his mediocre team with its extravagant payroll and prices to match. However, he's still revered by many in this city, mainly because he built Camden Yards and keeps money flowing into the black hole that is the majority of the O's system. That's a shame. But I will give him credit for at least keeping the O's from going the way of the Expos...without that big payroll, everything else being equal, Baltimore may have lost their team during the lean post-strike years. Who knows for sure. Point is, the day Angelos goes (probably the day he dies, in all honesty, because I have yet to hear one peep about a sale of any sort), will be a good day for the long term health of the O's.

That's a very long way of saying, I'm not an O's fan and never will be. I can watch the team (hell, I live a 10 minute walk from the Yard) without feeling like I'm sacrificing some moral high ground. But I won't cheer for them with any fervency.

I've always hoped for the day when DC would get its own team and the great tradition of the Washington Senators would be reborn. I can't tell you how happy I was when the decision was finally made to move the Expos to Washington. Even though it was basically condemning the organization to several seasons of losses and rebuilding, I know that most of us DC baseball fans thought it'd be worth the pain.

And I still think that way. The summer of 2005 was the best baseball season I have ever experienced. Period. It was the first year I had a home team to cheer for and hope for. It was the first time that I could entertain the idea of seeing a Major League baseball game without having to go to Baltimore. I had an entire team to examine and analyze! It was all mine. Well, sort of. You get my meaning. I went to college in Connecticut and knew many a member of Red Sox nation. My girlfriend, who did her masters degree at Boston University from 2004-2006 bought a Johnny Damon T-shirt (before he went to New York and made half of New England cry like little girls). For some perspective, not only is my girlfriend, Annie, from Cincinnati, but she's an opera singer (soprano) and carries her music in a huge pink bag. She was not a baseball fan until we started dating and then became a faithful member of Red Sox nation. Now that she's here in Baltimore, she's less so, but given her druthers, I think she'd still cheer for the Sox.

Anyway, I missed the first few months of the Inaugural Season because I was completing my masters degree at the London School of Economics, where baseball is called cricket and a match takes 5 days, which is insane. But once I got back stateside, I watched every Nats game I could. The fact that they were in first place (FIRST PLACE!) approaching the All Star break was fantastic...their eventual slide to .500 by September was sad but not unexpected. Actually, .500 was a great first season, in my opinion. Last season was a little rougher, but my commitment has never wavered.

Now, living in Baltimore and working for Legg Mason Capital Management, where the Orioles are as much a religion as value investing and the Bill Miller Way, it's tougher to show my Nats pride. I have the Nats schedule posted on my desk and a Nats bumper sticker pegged to my wall, but anything beyond that is tempting the gods, I fear. One great bonus: being a Comcast customer (I HATE COMCAST WITH THE FIRE OF A THOUSAND NOVA) I get the two channels of the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network, which means I get to see EVERY SINGLE NATIONALS GAME. It's incredible. 165 games X 3 hours per game = about 495 hours of Nats baseball available to watch.

So, all this being said, this blog is going to start out really simple: me posting about the Nationals. I'm going to let the layout and posting schedule of the blog develop organically but hopefully I'll be able to post several times a week, if not more.

And with that, I will end this very long post. I didn't mean for it to be so long, but that's what happens when I get going on the Nats. The rest of my posts will probably not be as long or boring...hopefully.