No Mas

So last Saturday I head out to my dad's in Tinley Park to do my long run. I have to do 17 miles, and he says he knows this 8-mile loop that we can do twice and then I can run a little extra to get to 17. He'll ride the bike along side me while I run. Sounds great. Then we get about 4 miles in and realize that, in fact, it is actually a 9.4 mile loop. So my 17-mile run turns into 18.8, which would be fine except that prior to that the longest I have ever run in my life is 14 miles. Well, to make a long (and I do mean LONG) run a short story I did survive and actually wasn't in too much physical pain. However, I immediately started thinking about how I need to run even farther this coming weekend and that made the mental pain close to unbearable. I really just want to fast-forward my life to Sunday at about 1:30 when I will be finished with it and it's quite depressing to be sitting here on a Friday morning and wish that most of your weekend was already over with. The good news is that after this weekend my training is pretty much done. I do have a couple more 10-mile runs but I no longer dread those as I once did. For the most part it will be just getting healed up and praying that I don't get a freak injury that knocks me out of commision and renders all this training useless. I do know this, though. If somehow I don't get to run the marathon in 3 weeks, that will just be a life goal that doesn't end up getting met because I am absolutely NOT going through this crap again.

In other news, if the marathon doesn't kill me I'm pretty sure the Cubs will. It's nice that they are playing meaningful baseball in September but I don't know if my heart can take it. Monday they blew a 4-1 lead and lost in 12 innings in heart-breaking fashion and then Tuesday they did their best to give up a 9th inning lead only to pull it out with a miracle double play. I was happy they won, but that didn't make the ulcer in my stomach any smaller.

It is during this time of the year that I am always starkly reminded of the difference between watching football vs. baseball. They are definitely my two favorite sports and I would probably give the nod to baseball as my #1 only because it is virtually every day for 6 months while you only get to see your football team for 3 hours a week. However, I must say that I find the two sports very difficult to watch simultaneously. A lot of people say that baseball is very slow and for most of the year I vehemently disagree. Once you get into the strategy that goes into pitch selection and how much the count matters to every batter, then every pitch becomes crucial and there's a lot of tension all the time even if to the non-fan it looks like nothing's happening. But when you're forced to compare baseball side by side with football it's hard to argue that it's definitely a lot slower. I'll have the baseball game on at the start of the inning, just as the first batter is getting ready to dig in at the plate. Then I flip over to football and see the kickoff and 22 guys running at an all-out sprint over and into each other. Then you see the offense run 3 more plays where there is just non-stop motion on the field. Maybe you even see a long run or pass or a turnover or none of that and just a punt but it all seems critical because precious seconds are ticking off the clock and the even more important strategic field position game is being waged. So then you flip back over to the baseball game and see that the same guy's still up after fouling off 4 pitches with a full count and now the catcher has gone out to hold what seems like an hour-long conference with the pitcher about pitch selection. Seriously, you start expecting a Power Point presentation to break out at any minute. It's just amazing how your perspective can change things. It's like you're driving down a normal road doing 40, and it seems neither slow or fast. But then you get on the expressway and speed up to 80 for a couple minutes. Then you go back and do 40 again and it seems like you're crawling.

I am working on another serious piece, which I was going to post today. I have come back from my break of reading fiction and finally got around to reading State of Denial (by Bob Woodward). This is the 3rd book I have read about Iraq (My Year in Iraq by Paul Bremer and The Prince of the Marshes by Rory Stewart are the others) and I already bought Fiasco by Thomas Ricks and plan to read that next. In addition to all that, I've been pretty religiously watching This Week and Meet the Press every week as well as reading The Economist and the latest GAO report on Iraq progress. So, anyway, I feel pretty well versed in what's going on over there and realized I have a lot of thoughts on the matter. So many thoughts, in fact, that I fear it is going to end up rivaling my thoughts on the national debt in length and I just wasn't up for that today. So, anyway, you can look forward to (or dread) that piece coming in the next couple weeks. I can pretty much summarize what has gone wrong over there with the following list: Rumsfeld bad, inadequate and (at times) non-existant planning, not enough troops, too much bureaucracy, money not getting to the people that needed it.

Have an excellent weekend all (3 of you)!