"Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson US essayist & poet (1803 - 1882)

Sunday, July 16, 2006

i really think the hardest thing in sports is to hit a round ball with a round bat, but...

the combined physics is awe inspiring to me. the balls movements in the relatively short distance and time span. the speed of the ball varying from low 70's to high 90 mph. the speed, strength, and accuracely of the batter to maintain any control over the hit ball...

but to me....

Baseball is a little dull, but...

i don't like to watch it on TV, but take me out to the ball game and i'm in heaven. y'know why?

it's our national pastime.

i heard an interesting comment from a sports reporter a few years ago, this is a paraphrase of how i remember it.

If Baseball is our pastime, Football is our passion. Not sure who i heard it from, it's stuck in my vault of useless knowledge taking up space normally used to remeber a birthday or anniversary.

Sorry to seem like taking a long way to get to my point, but i seem to have raised an eyebrow or two with some comments i made to another running blog or two, with my thoughts regarding running and blogging and stuff. To those of you maybe reading this, assuming you've kept reading, who know me well,...this would not be too much of a surprise. it most likely results in a shrug and perhaps surprise it took me this long.

I am sorry if my comment that i find statistics a little boring offended anyone. Truly i am. i have so much gray matter consumed with trivia, statistics and pop culture nonsense you would think completely the opposite.

please, please understand my reasoning and the total fear i have of statistics.

Remember my OCD post? if not real quick...i'm a bit obsessive, and it can occasionally totally distract, ie consume, me. i'm trying to run, see eventually running comes into play, too, among other things, help me find a balance in my life.

While losing weight, i have found myself weighing myself up to three times a day. Blogging and reading Blogs is right now taking me from time spent with the kids. i've started to wear a little Wendy's Kids digital watch while running. It's from "over the hedge", it's the raccoon character. it's velcro and fits on my wrists. It is an exercise in retraint to only glance at the watch when i hit mile markers. Then i spend the entire time 'till a marker stressing over calculating pace.

If i let them, stats and splits will destroy my holistic feeling of running as one gestaltic experience and break things down into micromanaging my workout.

So i apologize that my fear may have leapt out my fingertips and into the keyboard.

thanks again for reading

1 comment:

L*I*S*A said...

Yep, I let my body guide me, as it hasn't failed me yet. One of the best articles I read in Runners World was the one that said to leave your watch at home on most of your training runs. Heck, even Deena Kastor (marathon CHAMP) runs without her watch while training.

I find that when I run watchless, I can tune into my body much better and listen to her cues.

What it boils down to is the real, raw reason why we run. It's not because we want to constantly become faster, faster, faster. I KNOW this 37-year old body has its limits. I run for the way I feel WHILE running, as well as the runners' high when I'm finished. That's good enough for me. The races are frosting on the cake.