Sometimes I'm amazed at how a long run one week can seem so perfect and effortless. And then the next week everything sucks and nothing goes well.

That's been the story of my last two long runs.

Last week, I did 8 miles and everything felt amazing. My legs felt loose, the weather was fairly pleasant, I was moving at a decent pace, and I actually managed to negative split the run. The second set of four miles was a full minute+ faster than the first four miles.



This past weekend though, I don't think my run could have gone any worse.

First off, it was raining. And while it wasn't raining that hard when I first started the run, by one mile in it was close to pouring and I was soaked through. My shoes were waterlogged, my shorts were clingy to my thighs and water was streaming off my forehead into my heads.

And to top things off, I felt like crap. My legs felt like dead weight. I was sluggish (and probably hadn't fueled enough the day before). By three miles in, I was thinking about turning around and calling it quits.

I had ten miles scheduled, but I just wasn't sure how that was going to happen.



I managed to push on up the trail until Garmin read 4.33, but that was it. I turned around and did some semblance of a run/walk back home. By mile 7, it was more like shuffle a few steps, go back to walking, shuffle a few more steps, walk some more.

I felt like I'd been hit by a bus. It was a disaster.

I know that bad runs happen and this doesn't mean that my race in a few weeks is going to suck that bad, but it's still disheartening to have such a terrible long run, especially the week after I had such an awesome one.

As of last weekend, my softball season has officially come to an end (well except for the team I manage, but don't actively play on...that tournament is over Labor Day weekend.)

But for all intents and purposes, my season is over.



My Maryland alumni team played so-so in the elimination round of our tournament on Saturday. We won our first game, but got knocked out in the next round by a Tufts team that was just crushing home runs.

It didn't help that we weren't hitting the ball well that game, and we made some mistakes in the field. Not the best way to end the season, but what can ya do?



Overall softball was probably some of the most fun I had this summer.

I'm sad to see the season go because it means summer is pretty much officially winding down. I can already tell the days are getting shorter because it's dark again when I wake up to run. Boooo.

With my grad classes set to start next week and football slowly pushing out baseball on ESPN, it seems like summer is really starting to wind down as fall approaches.

And the start of fall means the start of fall racing season!

Here's a peek at what I'm signed up for this season:

Navy-Air Force Half Marathon - Sept. 14, Washington, D.C

Emily and I signed up for this race back in March or April when we were riding out post-Shamrock highs. It's one of the few DC-area races that we haven't already run, so it seemed like a good addition to our race calendars. The course doesn't look fantastically exiting, but that's OK. I'm sure we'll still have fun.

Army 10 Miler - Oct. 12, DC

This is another DC race that I've never done because it either normally conflicts with another race I'm running or football season. But luckily this year, it conflicts with neither. My mom is coming in to town to run the race too, which will be fun. The only thing I'm a little worried about is the very, very strict no headphones rule. It's been a long time since I've run a distance that long without my jams.

MCM 10K - Oct. 26, DC

I've done the full Marine Corp marathon, but never the 10K, and I thought it would be fun to race something shorter later in the season. Plus, you still get a medal and a congrats from a Marine for finishing the 10K. And maybe I'll actually be able to enjoy the latter miles of the course, since I pretty much hated every minute of it when I ran the full a few years ago.

(So you may have noticed the military theme for the first three races of the year. And it's true...and a little bit intentional. Part of the reason I signed up for the MCM 10K was so that I could hit a race from all the major military branches that host races in DC.)

Across the Bay 10K - Nov. 9, Annapolis, MD

Driving across the Bay Bridge to get to the beach pretty much terrifies me, but the chance to run across the 4-ish mile bridge that spans the Chesapeake Bay and connects Maryland's Eastern Shore to the western part of the state seemed wayyy too awesome to pass up. Let's just hope race day isn't ridiculously cold and windy. That would make for some pretty awful race conditions.

Other races that are potentially be considered, but I haven't slapped down an entry fee yet:

• 9/11 Memorial 5K


• Philly Half


• Rehoboth Half

What are you racing this fall? Anything fun?

This weekend I had another softball tournament -- this time for my Maryland alumni team.

The tournament for this league actually spans two weekends. This past weekend, 72 teams are broken into groups and play three games over the course of two days. Much like the World Cup, two teams advance out of each group to make it to next weekend's elimination round.


(Shamelessly borrowed from CAN's FB page)

We had two games on Saturday (8:10 and 10:30 a.m.) and then one game on Sunday (2 p.m.).

I'm so, so glad we had the late game on Sunday because after waking up really early, playing softball and then spending the rest of the day baking in the sun at what amounts to a 72 team epic tailgate, I was exhausted.



In good news, we won all three of our games -- beating two of the teams in our group by the mercy rule and knocking off the team ranked #1 over all.

So we've advanced to next week, and we'll find out today what time our quest for the championship begins.

I'm not a fast runner. Never have been.

And I certainly don't run for speed. I run because I like the way it makes me feel. I race only to compete with myself to see if maybe I've gotten a little bit faster over the years. But it's rare these days that I do a lick of speed work.



So I'm sure you can imagine my surprise when I found out I won my age group in a five mile race I did while I was on vacation.

My family pretty much goes on vacation the same week in July every year, and the Seashore Striders in Rehoboth happen to hold their annual five mile race on the Sunday after we get into town. It's a great, well-run, low key race.

I signed up the day-of and for $25 I got a tech shirt and some fantastic post-race food.


Post-race Rita's for the win!

In years past when I've done this race, I've gone out way too fast and blown up by mile two.

This year, I was coming in with zero expectations. I needed to do between five and six miles as part of half marathon, and this race seemed like a fun way to get that distance in.

I started off plenty slow, but was surprised that I was able to pass a decent amount of people in the early stages. Don't get me wrong, there were still tons of people ahead of me, but I was running pretty strong for having not raced in a while.

I got lucky and the weather was mostly overcast and fairly comfortable for most of the race. The sun came out strongly around mile 4, but at that point, I just told myself I had about 10 more minutes of running max.



I finished in 46:36 by Garmin, and 46:46 by the official time (gun time only, no chip time). It was not an especially fast time, so after eating my post-race Rita's, my mom and I headed back to the beach house.

I wish we would have stuck around for the awards though because they had really, really nice medals for all the age group winners. I emailed the race director that night when I saw that I had placed, asking if there was any chance I could pick up the award sometime during the week, but sadly I never heard back.



Womp, womp. The first (and probably only) time I place in an age group and I don't even get the awesome award that goes with it.

Overall though the race was fun, and if we're in Rehoboth next year for vacation I'm sure I'll do it again.

After giving my tired legs an extra day of rest yesterday after Saturday's softball tournament, I got back to half marathon training this morning.

Have I mentioned here before how much I hate summer humidity? It was at 90 percent when I left the house. So even though the temperature was only about 70 degrees, it was still pretty nasty out.

But, I just took it nice and slow since my legs were still pretty shot from softball, and I managed to survive.

I didn't take Garmin so I don't have any time stats (which really in weather like this is probably for the best), but I managed to knock out all five miles.

I can very, very slowly feel some of my endurance starting to come back. I know five miles is a long way from 13.1, but I still have plenty of time to slowly but surely get my distance back.

Who knew a day-long softball tournament would leave my quads so sore two days later? I think they've been less tight after some half marathons than they are right now.

But I'm not really complaining because my Senate league softball team rocked in the playoffs this year and landed ourselves in the championship game for the first time in the like 28-year history of the team.



Unfortunately we lost in the championship game 6-4, which was a huge bummer, but overall the day was pretty awesome. We played a lot of good softball.

So one softball league is officially wrapped up for the summer. The other two will be wrapping up in the next few weeks.