Andrew Schrauben

Fairly busy day... after work I had softball practice, but I wanted to get my running in, too. I drove to the ballfields about an hour early and took a tour by foot of the nearest neighborhood. After 36+ minutes I'd covered 4.4 miles, which was nice because it sure didn't feel like I was holding that kind of pace. I changed at my car, transforming from runner into ballplayer and waited for my team to show up.

Within half an hour we were warming up our arms, and then shagging balls while taking BP. Surprisingly my legs felt great despite my pre-practice run - I was accelerating without problems, leaping high, etc. I even hit the ball pretty well considering I hadn't swung a bat since last August. My shoulder held up fine - in fact, I had better zip on the ball than last season; however, I still can't throw very far with a good heave.

So was this a duathlon? 4.4 mile run followed by two hours of softball? What's neat about this "du" is that softball was one of the motivators for me to start running again. Four years ago I played softball for the first time since college and got tired just jogging out to the outfield! Sad. I used to run all over the field and turn ground balls into triples, so I started running again partly to make sure that softball would never get me out of breath.

And wouldn't you know, four years later, here I am telling you all that today's run puts me at 401 miles on the year. :)