In the hills, Eagles out, snot ride, Hobbit, I am the Bills

Saturday morning Cindy and I were out the door early to head down to Marco Island for the Hill Run.   Cindy was considering running this race as well but she has officially caught what I have had for 3 weeks and counting so she was feeling pretty lousy.

The race was small with numbers only in the low 200’s so timing it wasn’t a problem.  I had no weird glitches with the timing hardware this week.  The only failure I had was one timing bib that was dead as a doornail.  Since the race didn’t start until 8, was 5 miles long and was held in Marco, Cindy and I didn’t get back to the house until after 11am. After attending to post race work I headed outside to knock out a few chores before the Eagles game at 4:30.

So the Eagles were playing the 3-11 Washington Redskins, a team that has been in disarray all year long.  The Eagles had everything to play for since the only way they could ensure a playoff spot was to win their two remaining games against the lackluster Redskins and Giants, a challenging but totally doable scenario. So with it all on the line the Eagles came out and made a statement.  Unfortunately that statement was, “We suck”.

They played an incredibly sloppy game with double digit penalties, missed field goals, defensive backs left 1-1 in situations where they were overmatched and Mark Sanchez’s patented, “turn the ball over at the worst possible time” abilities. I found Chip Kelly’s stoic expression intensely aggravating as the game unraveled.  I was thoroughly disgusted as the ball sailed through the uprights after it left the Redskins kickers foot with 5 seconds remaining.

To make matters worse, one of the biggest reasons the Eagles lost was the Eagles defensive backs, particularly Bradley Fletcher was burned repeatedly by fcking Desean Jackson.  As much of an asshole as I think Jackson is, there is no doubt he is fast as hell and the Eagles just did not find a way to deal with it.

So when you pair the Eagles loss with the Cowboys surprising destruction of the Colts, the team is now officially eliminated from the playoffs. To be 9-3 at one point and not make the playoffs is really, really hard to do. Yet that is exactly what the team has done with this late season collapse. Ironically this is almost a complete reversal from last year where the team started slow but finished strong.

So where does this leave the team going forward?    Well the QB position should still be in the hands of Nick Foles.  Although statistically he was nowhere near as good as last year and he threw a lot of interceptions, at least the team was still finding ways to win.  With Sanchez the opposite has happened, they find ways to lose and many times it is connected to Sanchez turning the ball over in the clutch.  Most of his turnovers seem to be connected to him being indecisive in the pocket, taking just a moment too long to get rid of the ball.

The secondary pretty much sucks from what I can tell.  All season long they gave up 1st downs on 3rd and long far too routinely. This is hard to believe but the team gave up 1st downs on 3rd and 15 or greater an astonishing 33% of the time.  (the league average is 11%) The pressure the front 7 applied requires a a crew of D-backs adept at 1-1 coverage.  The team simply doesn’t have that.

In some ways the season was a bit misleading.  The Eagles wins were mostly built on the back of beating teams with losing records.  Except for a couple occasions, when they came up against the better teams in the league they went down in flames. With that being the case it probably meant that even if they made the playoffs the would have been one and doners once again.  The only positive I can take out of this is maybe this bitter disappointment and collapse will incite some greater change in the lineup next year. Oh well another year, another Eagles disappointment, I’m used to it.

Sunday morning I had it in my head to do a bike ride, Cindy was too sick to be out on the road so I planned flying solo.  For some reason I got it in my head that I should ride all the way out to Ave Maria even though it didn’t make sense based on my current state of wellness/endurance. I have done very minimal riding in the last few months, my last session being a pre-illness DD ride in early November.

In a way I think I wanted to do a long/hard ride just to prove I could still tackle something difficult after a 2014 that has been filled with much more fail than success from a physical standpoint.

Well as the ride began my inspiration eroded quickly.  After only 5 miles in my legs were feeling pretty shitty.  I started running contingency plans through my head like turning around at the 10 mile mark.  Well when I hit 10 miles it felt like I was almost there although it was another couple miles to the entrance, so I kept going.  I did compromise however, only going to the entrance of Ave Maria on Oil Well Road and not traversing the nearly 3 miles into town.  I was just happy to have made it to the sign.

So after chugging some water I reversed directions, content with returning at a significantly slower pace than I headed out at.   I dropped a gear so my cadence speed increased while decreasing the amount of torque I had to apply with each stroke.  Well the combination of the gear change and slightly more favorable wind conditions had a surprising effect, I actually was faster heading back.  The gear change made a big difference in the way my legs felt.  I was trucking 18-19mph much of the return ride.

During the last 25% of the trip a new problem arose, a nose that was flowing like a faucet.  Despite non-stop sniffling and forearm wiping I just could not get my nose under control.  It was maddening at times.  I sniffled my way into the driveway happy with my performance on the 24.25 mile ride and look forward to getting more into the swing of things as 2015 rolls in.

Shortly after I got back Cindy and I headed out to run some errands.  One of the stops was Lowes where I made a couple late additions to my Christmas decorations which were on clearance.  I grabbed a cool tree shaped LED thing which does all sorts of cool patterns, sort of the same way as my LED snowmen already do.  I also grabbed an inflatable, camouflaged Santa, for two reasons.  First I liked that he moves his arm which are holding binoculars up and down. Second, its tacky and silly, something that I don’t mind that much when it comes to holiday decorating.

Cindy was VERY busy on Sunday despite feeling bad, baking her ass off.  She made several cookie varieties as well as roasted pecans. The house smelled like the holidays all day. I am definitely the beneficiary of her love of cooking/baking.  She put our new corner cabinet/counter to good use in the process.

We saw the Hobbit at a very unconventional time for us, 3:15 on a Sunday afternoon.  We were rewarded with a theater that was nearly empty for the 3D showing.  I thought the movie was great just as I have thought every LOTR and Hobbit movie that preceded it was great.   I am a bit sad that the series now has officially run it’s course, great, great, great film making IMO.  It gets an A.

So I am officially the Buffalo Bills of my fantasy football league, losing in the finals for the third consecutive year.  Damn’s it’s frustrating.  Before I went to bed I had almost a 40 point lead despite Tom Brady and ironically the Bills defense underperforming greatly.  Well I awoke to see I had lost due to my opponent having Marshawn Lynch AND the Seahawks defense, both of which had big games.  I was very annoyed.  The annoyance was kicked up when I saw that if I started Tony Romo, who was predicted to score less points than Brady, I probably would have won the game since he outscored Brady 36-11. Woulda, coulda, shoulda.

I have a brief 3 day week followed by an awesome 6 days off in a row where I plan to tackle repainting the pool deck with Cindy’s help.