Well, that was a kick in the head (for reals)

I've had my share of injuries playing softball through the years. There are ones you expect, that just come with the territory. Examples of these would be a bruise from having a ball hit part of your body, and scraping up your legs from sliding or diving for a ball. Pretty commonplace, nothing to be concerned about. You might even get banged up from colliding with another player.

You do not, however, expect to get kicked in the head playing softball, and you especially do not expect said kick to come from a player on your own team, but alas, that is what happened. Let me allieviate any concern right away - this happened almost 2 hours ago now, and I'm pretty certain that I'm no worse for the wear except for a sore neck, that will likely be be more sore tomorrow.

So, here's how it happened. We were playing our playoff game, I was playing third base, as is my custom. There was a hit to the outfield. I don't remember the specifics, but the bottom line was that a runner was coming to third, and a throw come in from the outfield, rather wildly, to try and throw him out. I had to scamper off the base and make a pretty good stab to keep the ball in front of me. Because the runner saw how bad the throw was, he didn't stop right on the base but kept going around. As he saw I caught the ball, he stopped and went to dive back to the base, and I dove back into the bag to try and tag him. I was too late, and just as my glove hit the ground, I felt a "thud" on the back of my head, and I dropped down to the base.

As it turned out, our shortstop had come running in towards third. I'm not sure if he had been coming that way thinking he would get the ball if I missed it, or if he was trying to get to the bag to give a throw. Regardless, when he saw the runner diving into the base, he evidently tried to jump over him, and succeeded, but he did not succeed in jumping over me. Thus, I received a "nice" kick to the head.

I laid there, head on the base, pretty sure I was okay, but not wanting to get up until I was pretty certain of it. I never lost concisousness, though I gave our shortstop quite a scare, because while I laid there, I apparently had my eyes closed, and since I didn't move, he thought I was out. But I wasn't, I was completely awake, aware of what had just happened, what was going on in the game, etc, and after a few minutes of recovery, I returned to my position and the game continued.

I felt about cloudy for a while - after all, I had just been kicked in the head. However, by game's end (there was only another inning plus), that had all pretty much cleared out. I had my teammate check my eyes, nothing was dialated, and so I was without any of the symptons that I'm aware of for a concussion. Actually, given the nature of the hit, and how I felt immediately afterward, I think my neck took more of the pressure than my, which is why I expect to be sore in the morning.

All in all, a rather different softball experience, and now I can use the phrase "That's a kick in the head" as someone with experience! If only we had won the game...

Charting a new course

So, I've come to a "new" realization in the last few weeks: It gets really, really hot in the summer.

Okay, so, not exactly groundbreaking, I realize. In fact, it's something I already knew very well - it's just taken on a different meaning for me this year. You see, for the past several years, dealing with the summer heat basically meant dealing with a warm commute to work and toughing out the occasional softball game during a scorcher. Not the most fun in the world, but not really a big deal. Something changed for this year, and that, of course, was the fact that I took up running, which, as you know, generally takes place outdoors.

This ramifications of this realization began to take shape two Saturdays past, when I ran a 5k in my hometown of Shippensburg. This was to be an "experience" race anyhow, in that I wasn't going to be gunning at a particular time goal - and that was really for the best, because as the race approached it was clear it was going to be a really hot day, like around 90 for the high hot (though not as bad as this week). 2 things about the race exasperated the problem. First of all, the race was scheduled for 10 am. Now, I've not been racing very long, but it seems to me that waiting until mid-morning for a race start in the summer is just not a good idea. My first race started at 8:00 am, and had this one been the same, we could have had it about 10 degrees cooler than the 80 degrees we got. As a reference, the book I'm reading on a new training approach I'm looking to transition to considers anything above 60 to be adverse conditions, in terms of your ability to run your best time.

Secondly, apparently these race organizers don't know what distance a 5k is actually supposed to cover. 5 kilometers is roughly 3.1 miles. The night before the race, I drove what I roughly understood the course to be, without knowledge of where the exact start and finish would be. What I drove measured out somewhere over 3.3 miles, so I figured the start and finish would fall somewhere that would cut off the extra .2. When I got there Saturday morning, the start/finish line was actually positioned to make the course at least a tenth of a mile longer than what I had driven, so the race was going to be more like 3.5 miles than 5k.

I went out pretty slow, but the heat was just brutal (there was zero cloud cover and minimal shade on the course to offer any relief), and by about 2 miles I was feeling pretty spent. It was just an experience race, like I said, and I decided that what I wanted to experience was having a decent finish, so I walked for about a half a mile and then put on a very strong finish - came across in about 31 minutes, which translates to more like 28 for an actual 5k. Not exactly stellar, but I accomplished my only real goal of not having a completely miserable day that made me never want to run another 5k :-)

Anyhow, as you know if you live in the area, the week after the race we caught a stretch of spring-like weather, and I resumed my training with new vigor. And then, the heat wave hit. I'd already switched my workouts back to the mornings to deal with the rising temperatures, but lately we've consistently had overnight "lows" in excess of 70 degrees, so even if I get out before 5:30 am like usual, it's still already very warm, and you get the added humidity of the morning to go with it. Now, I see people running all the time anyhow, and if I was just doing easy running/long running, I could probably continue without issue, and just slow the pace down, but I find speed work in this mess to be absolutely brutal - and it's not the most fun thing to begin with. It also doesn't help that I play softball, and the last thing I want to do after playing 2 softball games on a 90+ degree night is go to bed and then get right up and run in more warm, humid weather the following morning.

So I've made a decision - full-scale training in mid-summer may work for some, but it is just not for me, and continuing to push at it is only likely to discourage me altogether. I also would like to remain active in softball and other recreational summer activities going forward, which are at odds with training as well - both from a perspective of taking energy away from training, and from posing extra injury risk. I've been through a winter already, and while there were some issues, I much preferred training in the cold to training the in the heat. There's just so much more you can do to combat the cold as opposed to what you can do when dealing with heat - and the activity of running itself is your ally in cold weather. There was actually only 1 day this winter where I skipped a planned run because I thought it was too cold, and I wasn't really even training for anything at that point, so it was easier to make those kinds of concessions because there was less motivation. February was kind of a rough month due to the 3 massive snow storms, but this wasn't a typical winter for our area in that regard.

All of that being said, at this point, I'm officially declaring myself to be in my running "off-sesaon." The race I was planning on running on August 14th in Mechanicsburg has been downgraded from a goal race to an experience race, with the potential for forgoing it entirely if it's a brutally hot day. Instead of full training (4 days a week, with 2 days dedicated to some form of speed work, 1 long run and one easy run, with each week getting progressively more difficult) aimed at improvement, I will simply look to maintain as much of my current level of conditioning as possible with a lighter schedule that will stay consistent rather than building week to week, with more cross-training as well. Come the end of August, I'll plan to begin full-scale training for the Falcon Fun Run at Messiah's homecoming on October 16, and then look to continue training and racing through the late fall and winter, into late spring/early summer, before hitting the "off-season" again next summer.

So, you live and learn, and you make adjustments. I had a plan, the plan is now changing, and may change again in the future.