Catching up

Believe it or not, I am still alive. It's been over a month since I posted here. Not really sure why, just been lazy (about posting, anyway). So, time to get back at it.

Running has been going pretty well. I've managed to get back up to 70 miles per week a couple of times and have started getting long runs in (which significantly helped in achieving 70 mpw) the last four weeks. Most of those long runs have gone very well, but I did run an 18 miler last weekend that was a struggle. Not sure why, but my legs died on me at the halfway point, but I was 9 hilly miles from home and had no choice but to keep plugging. But then yesterday I ran a 16 miler where my legs still felt fresh when I was done. The mysteries of running....

This past weekend I wrapped up 3rd place in the men's open division of the Black Hills Trail Running Series....and I didn't even run. I had accumulated enough points throughout the summer that I was assured of 3rd in the series going into the last race. Still, I would have run the final race but my son's football team was playing in the league championship (more on that later) at the same time so I was at the game instead (which was MUCH more nerve-wracking than any race I've ever run). I won the men's open division last year, but only missed one race. I missed a few this year, which hurt my chances of repeating so, really, third is about as good as I could've hoped for.

Back to football, this year my son played for the first time in the Black Hills Youth Football League. There isn't a team in Belle Fourche, so he played for the Spearfish Rams mitey mite team (6-8 year olds). The league had 6 teams in the mitey mite division and the Rams finished the regular season with a 5-1 record. Their one loss came on the last week of the regular season to the Rapid City Steelers, a team they had beaten in the first week of the season (which turned out to be the Steelers' only loss of the season). So, it was pretty clear that the Rams and Steelers were the best two teams in the league. The top 4 teams advanced to the playoffs, where the Steelers beat the Bears and the Rams beat the Broncos to advanced to the Super Bowl. Everyone was expecting a good game and it definitely lived up to it. The Rams took a 12-0 lead early in the 3rd quarter, but the Steelers managed to pull within 12-6 at the end of the 3rd. The game ultimately came down to the final minutes when the Rams stopped the Steelers on 4th down with a couple of minutes remaining, but then couldn't convert enough first downs to run the clock out. So, on 4th and short from deep in their own territory with only 13 seconds left, the Rams opted to intentionally take a safety and run the clock down as much as possible. That left 5 seconds on the clock, the score was now 12-8 and the Rams had to kickoff. The kickoff was immediately covered, leaving the Steelers with one play to score from about 40 yards out and 3 seconds left. The ensuing pass attempt was knocked down and the Rams were champions! Pretty exciting to say the least. One thing I know for sure is that it's much, much harder watching a game like that from the stands, as a parent, than it is actually playing the game. I was in some pretty close, intense games in high school and never once did I feel as nervous then as I felt watching that game on Saturday. Now I know how my mom felt during all those football games I played in.

So, there are the highlights from my last month plus in a nutshell....hopefully they'll come more frequently from now on.