The rest of the Florida trip, by way of observations

#1 - Getting up at 4:00 am to catch a flight, then going straight from the airport to the basketball stadium, then spending 12+ hours at the stadium watching 4 basketball games and getting back to your hotel after midnight makes for one long, exhausting, but awesome day.

#2 - I don't know whose idea it was to combine barbecued pulled pork and nachos, but that guy (and let's face it, it has to be a guy) is now one of my heroes.

#3 - I'm not sure that any of the female Kentucky cheerleaders would satisfy the minimum height requirements to ride the big roller coasters at amusement parks.

#4 - For what we paid for bottled water at the NCAA tournament, it had better have healing properties!

#5 - Getting so drunk that you can barely walk is epically stupid.  Doing so on 6 dollar beers at a spring training baseball game is also a really poor financial decision.

#6 - On a similar note, the NCAA's refusal to allow alcohol sales at tournament games might anger a lot of fans (and disappoint a lot of vendors) but it's probably among the smartest decisions they've ever made.  I don't even want to imagine what introducing heavy alcohol consumption into that environment could result in.

#7 - TV timeouts suck when you aren't watching the game on TV.  During the UCLA/Michigan State game, there were 18 timeouts (8 TV, the maximum 5 called by each team), and then for good measure there was an officials timeout to make sure they had the clock set right near the end of the game.

#8 - I hope, for the sake of the university, that the college-age Florida fans who sat behind us during Florida's game on Saturday were guys who grew up Florida fans but couldn't actually get into the school.  Somehow, I doubt it.

#9 - I was shocked (shocked I say!) to find out that the Rita's stand at the Phillies' spring training games was not observing the "Free ice on the first day of spring" ritual.

#10 - Going from 2 days of the intense, win or go home, fans "living and dying" on every play atmosphere of the NCAA  basketball tournament, to a spring training baseball game is pretty anti-climatic.

#11 -  Given how chaotic the first weekend of the tournament was, how is it that the higher seed won each of the 6 games we saw?  We couldn't even get a 5 seed over a 4.

#12 - It would have done serious harm to my bracket, but I so completely wish Kentucky v. Princeton had gone the other way!  Great games that go down to the last second just aren't quite as memorable when the "big boy" pulls it out.

#13 - I can't say that I was overly shocked to see a guy drumming on a toilet seat that was suspended around his neck during the Kentucky/Princeton game.  That said individual was a member of the Princeton pep band did come as a bit of surprise, however.

#14 - You'd think a guy as big as the Yankees' CC Sabathia wouldn't have any trouble finding baseball pants that didn't fit like pajama bottoms.

#15 - A gentlemen slipped an usher at the Phillies game a $20 to get a chair for an 87 year old man he was with, perhaps his father.  A nice gesture, but had he been thinking ahead, he probably could have used that money to get the man something better than a standing room ticket in the first place.

#16 - The Kentucky fans were split in their allegiances during the Florida games, and the same was true of the Florida fans during Kentucky games.  Some rooted loudly against their hated rivals, others rooted for them in the name of "conference pride."  Those who chose the former chose wisely, and this is not up for debate.

Florida trip summary and Strawberry Classic 5k report

So, I’m back from my annual “pilgrimage” to the Tampa Bay area with my Dad.  Every year since 2004, Dad and I have headed down for an extended weekend in Clearwater, which is just across the bay from Tampa and the spring training home of the Phillies.  Our typical itinerary of watching two baseball games wound up being significantly altered this year, for a number of reasons.

#1 – Shortly after we got back from last year’s trip, I noticed that Tampa was a host site for the first weekend of the NCAA Division I men’s basketball tournament.  Dad and I are both college basketball fans, and this seemed like a really good opportunity, so I put in for tickets and got selected – to the extent that there actually was selection – I doubt they actually sold out at that point, if ever.   Dad’s ticket was the family’s Father’s Day gift for him last year.

#2 – As you might be aware, the Phillies have been pretty good the last few years.  Greater success usually brings greater interest in sports teams, and the Phillies have been no exception.  Ticket demand for regular season games had exploded the last couple years, but Spring Training tickets had been relatively immune to the phenomenon – until this year.  Despite getting in within minutes of tickets going on sale for individual games, I could only get general admission seating (on the grass above the outfield wall) for Sunday’s game with the Yankees, and couldn’t do much better for a Friday game against the Pirates.  I initially got tickets for both games, but after some thought determined that with 6 basketball games on the schedule, 2 baseball games might be overkill, so I re-sold the Pirate game tickets.

#3 – I had been planning on running a 5k in Reading 2 weekends prior to our trip.  However, the weather ended up being really miserable that day, and since I hadn’t pre-registered, I decided it wasn’t worth the trip.  There wasn’t anything in the area to run the weekend prior to the trip, and after the trip would be getting too close to the race I wanted to run in mid-April.  I didn’t want to skip out on a March race entirely, so I decided to see if there were any races in the Tampa area during our trip that would be feasible for me to run.  It turned out that there were several, and I settled on the Strawberry Classic, which was just outside of Tampa, on Saturday morning.

I am sure that I will cover some of the highlights of the rest of the trip later this week, but for now, I want to focus on the race.  I was a bit leery of scheduling a race on a vacation, simply because I wasn’t sure how well I’d be able to manage my rest, nutrition, hydration, etc going in.  Thursday was a crazy day – we flew down to Tampa first thing in the morning and went directly from the airport to the basketball arena, where we were for the duration of the tournament action for the day, which meant we didn’t get back to the hotel under after midnight.  Friday, however, we didn’t have anything planned, so we slept in, went and had a nice big breakfast, and then stopped at a grocery store so I could pick up some bottled water for the rest of the day, and some cereal bars for snacking that evening and pre-race food the next morning.  The rest of the day centered around watching basketball from the comfort of our hotel room, so I was pretty sure rest wasn’t going to be an issue.

I got up just after 6 on Saturday morning, and we were at the race by 7:15.   One concern I had about running in Florida was climate – it’s obviously typically much warmer there than in central PA.  In fact, it got into the mid-80s every day we were there.  However, at race time (8:00 am), it was still only in the high 50s and still – perfect running conditions.  It was also consistent with some of the warmest weather I had trained in prior to the trip.  It was funny watching a number of the natives shiver – I guess it’s all about what you’re used to.

The start of the race was somewhat disorganized, with some confusion about where the start line was.  They set us up at one spot, then moved us forward, then moved us back again.  None of these spots turned out to be the “real” line, as I’ll detail later.  Also, there was a 10k race that started at the same time and split off about a mile and a half in, and between the 2 races I believe there were well over 400 racers in total.  The director was trying to shout some important instructions (like how the courses were marked) over everyone without any amplification.  I was near the front of, so I was fine, but I guarantee there were plenty of people who never heard him.  It wasn’t a big deal, but this was the 30^th year for this race, so it seemed odd that it wasn't a tighter ship.

Once we finally got started, I settled into what felt like the pace I was looking for.  I had adjusted my training after the last race to include much more work at/near expected race pace, and it clearly paid off, because based on a woman who must have had a GPS and was a couple steps in front of me, I ran the first mile in 7:14, which was precisely what I was looking for.  Everything I had seen about the course on the internet led me to believe that it was very flat, at least by PA standards, and that evaluation proved to be correct.  There were some rolling slight ups and downs, but nothing I would have classified as hills.  Between that and the weather conditions, this was a perfect setup for a PR.  I hit the 2 mile marker at 14:40 on my watch – which indicated that I had slowed down on the 2^nd mile – but it turns out that was actually misleading.  (More on that later)  I was definitely starting to feel it, but I was still very strong.  This was a new feeling for me this late in the race, as opposed to my previous 2 races where by this time I was just trying to hang on and drag myself to the finish.

At this point, I was feeling very good about at least coming in under 23 minutes, which would have been a PR by over a minute and was my “middle” goal time.  When I got to a point that I recognized from the map as being about 2.5 miles in, I lifted my pace just slightly and began really looking forward to the turn back towards the finish.  It came just before I hit the 3 mile marker, at which point I looked at my watch and knew I was going to break 23 with ease.   There was one final turn to the finish, and after I made that I started my finishing spring, crossing the line with the clock at 22:31 – a PR by over 90 seconds, and 1 second off my most optimistic goal time.

As it turned out, the course had actually been a bit long, 30-40 yards long.  They had started us well back off of the real line (which I had noticed when we ran past it and wondered about) because the road was much more narrow at that point and they were concerned about squeezing a mass start through the space.  So, I actually probably ran closer to a 22:20.  This also explained why my second mile (based on the mile marker) seemed to drop off from my first, which had been tracked from our actual start by GPS.  It’s actually probably a very good thing there wasn’t a 1 mile marker based on the “real” start, or that I didn't seen it, because I would have thought I was going too slow and probably lifted the pace unnecessarily.

Suffice to say, I was thrilled with the run.  Of the races I have run to date, it was first one that I felt I had run a quality race.  After running the first two miles at about a 7:15/mile pace (accounting for the extra length at the start), I covered the last 1.1+ in 7:51, which comes out at a 7:00-7:05/mile pace.  That’s the first time my last mile has been my fastest, and in fact, I’m sure it was also the first time my last mile wasn’t my slowest by a good bit.  I was not passed by anyone in the 2^nd half of the race, which was also easily a first.

That being said, I still had some very good takeaways in terms of areas for improvement, mainly related to finishing.  As pleased as I was by my last mile, it could have been better.  I was glad to finally have something left for the last mile of a race, but I felt like I probably had too much left when I crossed the line.  In hindsight, I probably could have lifted the pace a bit starting at the 2 mile marker, and I definitely should have started my finishing sprint at the 3 mile marker, rather than waiting for the very last stretch.  I’m not kicking myself over this, because I went into the race wanting to miss on the conservative side of my tactics, if I missed.  I knew all along I was running a very solid race, and I’ve not raced enough yet to really know how to interpret how I’m feeling late in a race, so I was very cautious about making a tactical mistake that would cause me to blow up before the finish.  Going forward, however, I will really be looking to maximize that finish.  The first step was having a race where I got into the last mile in a position to have to make those types of decisions, as opposed to one where I was simply hanging on for dear life.   Not finishing as well as I could have probably did cost me an age group award, however.  I finished only a few seconds behind the guy who finished 3^rd in my age group, and I was really gaining on him coming to the line.  I’m pretty sure I would have had enough to get by him had I started my finishing sprint 100 yards further back.  Oh well!

So, all in all, it was an awesome day and definitely validated my decision to bail on the Reading race.  I'm very excited about getting back into training this week, after a little recovery, and preparing to try to build on this race with some other races later in the spring.  My long term goal is to go under 20 minutes, and to that end, I want to at least be under 22 - ideally cracking the 7:00/mile pace barrier (~21:45) - by mid-May/early June, before I take a break from more intense training/racing during the hottest part of the summer.  That seems significantly more attainable now than it did before this weekend.

Responding to WBC

I’m offended right now, in a way so deep and penetrating that I’m not sure that I’ve ever felt anything quite like it.  I’ve been on the edge of tears several times, tears of both sadness and anger, bubbling up from within, calling cards of a heart that is very troubled.

Let me back up and give some background.  If you live in or around central Pennsylvania, you can’t possibly have missed the biggest local news story of the last couple days: the tragic house fire that claimed the lives of 7 of the 8 children of a Perry County family.  The tragedy has made national news, so I’m sure that many far beyond the area know of the story as well.  This is obviously an unimaginable tragedy that is painful and gut-wrenching on its own.  However, today a new wrinkle has entered the story, with news that the Westboro Baptist Church is planning to picket at the funeral of these children next week.

Events over the last few years, and even the last few weeks, have garnered national attention and made it highly likely that you have heard of this group already.  If you haven't, consider yourself lucky.  I’m not going to take any space here to further introduce you to them, because I refuse to be a vehicle that exposes people to their message.   I will say that their previous notoriety has come from picketing the funerals of soldiers who were killed in combat.  If you don’t know anything about this group, you have my full blessing to stop reading.  If you do know of them, however, I’m quite certain that you have a better understanding of why I am feeling the way that I described in the opening.

First of all, let me say that I am hoping against all hope that this is a bluff on the part of WBC.  While the group has certainly followed through on many of these types of plans in the past, it also wouldn’t be out of character for them to simply announce their intentions in order to make a stir, only to not make the trip.  I pray, for everyone’s sake, that that is the end result in this case.  However, even if they don’t show up, the announcement and the specter of their possible appearance has already created an additional distraction and negative focus that a hurting family and community just should not have to deal with.  I so desperately wish that the media would decide not to pay any attention to the actions of WBC, but that’s just not realistic, and it is already too late for that in this situation.  And so, simply as a human being, I’m deeply offended that anyone would ever use the occasion of a funeral for innocent children who died so tragically to promote any kind of agenda, let alone an agenda like that of WBC.

However, as a Christian, it cuts even deeper, because I am offended that they do so in the name of my God and my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  I am angered to my very core that these individuals choose to smear the name of my God by claiming His endorsement of their message of hate.  I am incredibly troubled by the possibility that people who don’t know Christ have or might come to see these people as His legitimate messengers.  All of it stirs me up so much, on top of the pain I feel for the family and their loss.

And yet, there is still another feeling stirring inside of me; one that is somewhat new to me in a situation such as this, and that is pity.  My heart breaks for the members of WBC, for hearts that are so blinded, so enslaved, so broken and destroyed by sin and the work of the enemy that they have arrived at such a twisted view of God – if they are sincere in their beliefs – or have been led down a path of using God as a cover for another agenda.  There is something very broken deep inside of them that needs restoration, restoration that only a true encounter with the God whose name they trample on can provide, the restoration that we are all lost without.

This is not to somehow mitigate or excuse the offense – these individuals have made their choices and, absent the mercy and grace of God in the person of Jesus Christ, they will answer for them in full one day.  However, Paul makes it very clear that our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the spiritual forces of evil.  These people are nothing more than blinded pawns of our enemy, and they are still God’s creations – people that He longs to draw to Himself.  No matter how hopeless it may seem, nobody is beyond the reach of God’s grace – and who better to testify to that than Paul: a man whose life took a complete 180 after his own encounter with Christ forever changed his understanding of who God was , and of what serving Him meant.

And so I urge all of my brothers and sisters in Christ who might feel as I do: Go ahead and be angry.  I believe it is a righteous anger to take offense at the name of our God being dragged through the mud by those claiming to speak for Him, and at those who would look to exploit the pain of the suffering in such a manner.  Further, let those feelings move you to action.  And yet, let us not choose to wage war in the earthly realm by repaying hatred with hatred and evil with evil.  Shout from the rooftops that these people do not speak for you and your Lord and Savior – but also pray for them, that God’s light would finally break through the darkness, and that they would come to see and know God for who He really is.  Stand in the opposite spirit – pray for the hurting family and community, look for tangible ways to show love and support – let the love, grace, and mercy of Christ - and the provision that He has made for dealing with our sin - stand in stark and overwhelming opposition to the message of WBC.

My hope and prayer is that, in all of this, God will take that which the enemy has designed for evil and use it for His glory – to multiply and amplify His work amongst the lives of the hurting and broken and those who surround them – including the hurting and broken who would seek to do harm.