Foul balls, seat of the pants 16, hands off, 70 and sunburned

So I left for my quick east coast visit with Randall and Tracy late Friday afternoon.  Time was of the essence since the Marlin – Phillies game started at 7.  I wanted to get across the alley as quickly as possible.  That plan was quickly derailed when I saw no less than 8 cars pulled over westbound with another half dozen state troopers waiting to nail more in a MASSIVE speed trap.  I was paranoid that a similar trap was waiting for me around some corner so I kept my speed generally no higher than 75 for most of the drive.

Despite my lower than anticipated cruising speed in the SSR I pulled into Tracy’s driveway right around 6.  After dumping my stuff and quickly changing we headed right out the door.  For some reason I thought it wouldn’t take that long to get to Miami, even on a Friday evening.  Boy what  a stupid thought that was. Traffic was in a word, awful.

I was quite glad Randall was driving.  He has adapted to the “everyone is an asshole” driving style which I simply can not stand.  This style requires non stop hard acceleration, hard braking and squeezing into any tiny opportunity to get your vehicle in front of the thousands clogging the roadway. It was crazy.

The traffic resulted in us not getting into the building until the third inning.  Before finding our seats we hit the food stand, I was hungry by then.  Two personal pizzas and two beers cost a FCKING ridiculous $37, a theme that repeated throughout the night.

So when Randall told me about the tickets he bought I quickly looked at a seating chart and thought they were good seats on the lower level somewhere.  Well I had no clue just how good they were.  We descended and descended until we were 5 rows off the first base line, the best seats I ever had at a MLB game, kudos to Randall.

I have been to Marlins stadium before but when I did the roof was closed.  Friday night it was wide open, giving the stadium a different feel.  To be honest, because of the high humidity I wouldn’t have minded if they closed it up and flipped on the AC.

The seats were fantastic, I couldn’t believe that Juan Samuel, the Phillies first base coach whom I remembered quite well from his days as a shortstop/2nd baseman, was within 50 feet of us.  It was very cool.  Being so close to the action was a new experience.

The Marlins, despite being in a brand new stadium for only the second year already have fallen right back into piss poor attendance.  The stadium might have been 20% full.  Of course the executives don’t help matters when they sell off their quality players year after year.  They gutted what was a potentially solid line up after the end of last year.  That and Miami has always been just a terrible place in terms of support for their football and baseball teams. We were surrounded by as many Phillies fans as Marlins fans.

I had decided, despite the ridiculous prices, I wanted to drink some beer.  I kept the flow of Bud Lights going for most of the game.  A loose wallet inventory at the end of the night revealed that in total I had spent around $90 on food/beer, crazy.

The alcohol kept what was sort of a boring game, exciting.  I had my first legitimate shot ever to get a foul ball, ironically I didn’t try to get it.  When it came our way I was pretty drunk and had an almost full Bud Light in my hand.  The ball came bouncing our way and popped up in a trajectory that was almost exactly over my head.  For whatever reason I was more interested in not spilling my beer than catching the ball.

Randall, who was on my right and a young guy that was on my left had different ideas.  They both sprang up and grabbed wildly for the ball.  The kid outreached Randall but the ball bounced off his hand and into the lap of a Phillies fan a couple seats to my right.  I probably could have easily outreached both Randall and the kid but if I caught the ball I would have wound up giving it away to a close by kid anyway.

The game wound up going extra innings with the Phillies winning in the 10th after Chase Utley hit a RBI triple.  Randall and I stuck around for the post game fireworks.  It seemed weird the Marlins put on a fireworks show after a loss.  As a Phillies fan it seemed totally appropriate. 🙂

Randall and I didn’t get back to Tracy’s house until a very late hour.  I don’t think my head hit the pillow until a little after midnight.  I was exhausted and drunk.  This was an issue because of a commitment I made earlier in the night.

Somehow I missed the fact that Tracy was training for her first ever full marathon, in Alaska, no less.  She had mentioned she was doing a 16 mile training run Saturday, starting at a bright and early 5:30 am.  I had my SSR meet up on Saturday but it didn’t start until 9:30.  Some quick math in my head worked out that I could do both without a major problem.  Too bad part of that math didn’t figure in that I never ran 16 miles before.

So despite getting home late, drunk and tired, I set my alarm on the phone for 4:30 am and pulled myself out of bed.  When Tracy saw me up she laughed and reminded me I totally didn’t have to come.  I told her it was fine.  Once I mentally commit to doing something, even something ill advised as this, I have a hard time derailing it.

A rational person would have never even considered doing this.  The farthest I have ever run is the 13.1 mile half marathon distance and the last time I did that was at the Hooters Half Marathon the first weekend of March.  Since then I have run 6 or 7 miles, once a week.  Jumping up to a 16 mile run from that level  would be stupid in any conventional running wisdom book.

Tracy was doing the run with her local Team in Training group.  She was concerned that they would be keeping a pace she wouldn’t be able to maintain which is why I offered to tag along, to keep her company.

So we showed up a little before the run start time.  They had a nice spread of pre-run food and drink available.  I had heard of team in training before but I never knew the level of support they offered.  They had several groups out on the road, different pace groups, ranging from walking pace to fast running pace.  Each group included at least one Team in Training coach or captain who was responsible for making sure the group was ok as well as offering encouragement and advice.

So we headed out into the dark streets, walking for what felt like close to a half mile before we started running.  The pace was intentionally slow since the distance covered was going to be quite long.  Tracy was worried I would mind running so slow, I assured her I didn’t care, especially when venturing into distances I never had seen before.

The Team in Training style of run isn’t something that would appeal to me if I was training for a race.  There was a lot of stopping during the run, too much for my tastes but something that works better for a less competitive mindset.  Not only did T in T have the food and water at the start, they had no less than a half dozen water stops set up along the course.  They really put a lot of effort into supporting runners in their program.

The mileage early felt ok but not great.  It didn’t take long for my right hip to start throbbing.  As we got into double digit mileage everything else from the waist down chimed in with their mutual dislike of being asked to carry my body along for such a long distance.

During the run there were lots of “interesting” people to see.  The most memorable for me was the guy that had what looked to be a male “tramp stamp” on his pelvis, easily visible above his low hanging shorts.  There was a 10 minute section of the run where we were subjected to the maddening sound of sea wall being driven deep into the sand with a pile driver.  Damn that was annoying.

Although the pace was never enough to make me really breathe heavy, except when we went up some bridges, my legs felt like total cement as the run came to a close.  I just wanted to stop the pain.  Finally, roughly three and a half hours after we started, the 16 miles was behind us.

In my head, there was too much stop and go for me to count it as an official run but that is just the way my brain works.  My body disagreed, I was beat.

By the time we got back I had to jump in the shower and then head immediately out to the SSR event, despite an overwhelming urge to just crash on a couch for a couple hours.  I didn’t wind up getting on site until after 10:30.  Since I wasn’t having any scheduled work done it wasn’t really a big deal.

The format of this event was different than the last tech session which was very hands on.  At this location we had use of a garage that was fully staffed with mechanics whom were tasked with doing most of the work for the SSRFanatics.  To be honest, I would have preferred a more hands on event.  Even so, a lot of the fanatics were giving the mechanics tips on how to complete certain tasks since they had more hands on experience with the trucks.

I basically did a lot of observing, coffee drinking and donut eating along with mingling with the other SSR guys.  One guy showed me this cool rag/cloth that can give similar results to clay bar’ing your car with much less work.  Another guy showed me the way he handled the fading rubber on the running boards.  The group is filled with endless tips and tricks.

I bought a set of cool LED projection lights.  Once installed they project the SSR logo on the ground.  I’m not quite sure how/when I will install them but it should be kind of cool once I do.

I did bring my Craiglist, factory chrome wheel along, hoping that maybe I would be able to get it swapped out with the badly pitted wheel that is on the truck now.  Luckily they had a kid free that could do it for me.  He moved the tire to the “new” wheel without major incident.

The wheel that was pulled was in the worst shape of the 4 by far.  To be honest the wheels now look good enough that I might not even feel the need to look for long term replacements.

I was feeling increasingly zombie-like as the event went on due to the long run.  I cut out around 1:30.  I definitely enjoyed myself more at the first get together but I still had fun regardless. You can see all my pics from the event here.

When I got back to the house I snuck in a quick nap after an ice cream/grocery store run with Randall and Tracy.  Randall and Tracy were invited to a birthday party Saturday night.  I told Randall I was fine tagging along.  With enough alcohol I can manage to blend in, even in a situation where I don’t really know anyone.  Randall brought a number of BLP’s to assist me in the process.

The party was fun, held at a cute house that was on a canal, complete with a dock and boat.  Everybody there was nice and I never had an issue bouncing around between various groups.  I drank every BLP that was there and ate way too much of the very good food laid out on the table.

It felt good to sleep Saturday night.  I woke up at a very late for me, 8:30 am.  I had told Randall I was heading out late morning.  That gave us time to go out and have breakfast.  Tracy had suggested we go to a place she heard a lot of good stuff about named OB House.

We arrived and saw a big crowd waiting outside.  Tracy put in our name and was told we had about a 30 minute wait.  Randall and I walked around a bit while we were waiting, first to take a look at a city wide bike rental thing where you can grab a bike from one location and return it to another.

We then walked by the science museum/Imax theater.  The museum includes this incredibly cool perpetual machine type thing where balls make their way along a wire mesh track that is HUGE.  I could have sat and watched it for a long time.

We finally got to sit down, the wait was probably closer to 45 minutes.  The indoor seating area was pretty small but cozy.  The one negative that hit me right away was the noise level.  The hard floor and walls teamed with a small area made for a very loud space requiring substantial effort to make the person across the table from you hear what you were saying.

The food itself lived up to the billing, all three of us liked what we ordered quite a bit.  The $8 orange juice made me cringe a bit but Randall was nice enough to pick up the bill. I threw down the tip.  As we were leaving we were interacting with his incredibly friendly and cute french bulldog.

He LOVED people and would go from person to person looking for affection.  He was so cute.  We also ran into some other friends of Randall and Tracy that were coming as we were going.

So once we got back I packed up and got ready to roll.  I thanked Tracy and Randall for the hospitality as always.  It was great to see them.  I had a lot of fun jammed into a small block of time.

The ride back across the state was entirely top down despite the bright sun and hot, muggy air.  I arrived back at the house with a toasted face, not a good thing for someone with a history of basal cell skin cancer.  I spent the rest of my Sunday attending to only the bare essential must do chores.

Next weekend is going to follow a similar blueprint with Troy rolling into town on Saturday for a 4 day visit.

If you want to see all of my pictures from the weekend look here.