As of Monday night, I can officially hang my softball cleats up until next season.



My work league ended with a loss in the second round of the playoffs (by two to the only undefeated team in the league) and my alumni league wrapped up on Saturday.



Our Maryland team had a great run. We unfortunately lost in the semi-finals to Pitt in a game where we just played like crap all around. We couldn't hit, we couldn't field, it wasn't our usual brand of Maryland softball.

It was a bummer of a way to go out, but if we're looking on the bright side, it was the first time we'd made a run that deep in the tournament since 2009.

Part of me is really sad to see softball season go. I've had tournaments three straight weekends in August, and they're some of my favorite weekends of the year.

But another part of me is OK to slide into the off-season. My MBA classes started up again on Monday, and training for the Baltimore Half started this week too, so not having to work around softball schedules will probably be good for my sanity.

I know summer isn't officially over yet, but man with softball season wrapping up and classes getting underway, it sure feels like it is.

Happy International Left-Handers' Day to all my fellow southpaws!

So remember when this blog was actually about running (or at least largely about running)? I kind of do, but I will admit it's been a while since I've had a good post to write about running.



Running was happening this summer, but since I wasn't actively training for anything, it didn't seem all that important/necessary to chronicle the minutiae of each of my runs. (Those posts always turn into wahhhhh DC humidity is the woooooorst, and you can only write so many of those).

But with my many softball teams slowly winding down, and the Baltimore Half marathon creeping up on me, I'm going to be diving back into training mode next week.

You know what else starts next week? The fall semester of my MBA classes.

So I will go from a glorious six weeks where I did nothing but lounge by pools, play softball and do the occasional 3-5 miler straight into half marathon training and intense class mode. That should be just a delightful transition.



Given my past rocky experiences of trying to train for a race while in grad school and my unfortunate tendency to get injured if my mileage creeps too high, I'm actually going to be following a "beginners" half marathon training plan this time around.

I know I'm far from a beginner in terms of running. I've been doing this for close to 10 years now, but if I'm being realistic about my time available to train and my injury history, I know I need to stick to something that's less likely to cause me to get hurt.



My training plan is going to be loosely based off Hal Higdon's novice program with three shorter runs during the week and a longer run on the weekend.

I think this kind of low mileage plan is going to be the best thing to fit into my very crazy fall schedule and allow me to get to the starting line healthy.

My alumni softball league had part one of our playoffs on Saturday and Sunday. With 67 teams, close to 1,200 people and softball games from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. each day, the weekend was just a giant party.



(L to R) Jon, me and Zac after our first game

Pool play was this weekend, and my team won all three of our games, which means we advance to the elimination round next weekend.

We got lucky this year and our games were at 8 and 10 a.m. on Saturday and noon on Sunday. So once we got the first two games out of the way, we had the entire rest of the day Saturday to hang out at the most epic tailgate ever.



We played some cornhole, the guys drank some beer, and we played a lot of slip n slide.



I forgot how painful slip n slide can be. I have massive bruises on my arms from sliding down the tarp.



On Sunday, you could tell a day of being in the sun really caught up to people. We won our game, but everyone was dragging.

I hit the ball pretty well on Saturday, not so much on Sunday mainly because I was basically a walking zombie. Hopefully I will make it to the batting cages on Tuesday to work on the basic mechanics before next weekend.

I can't believe this weekend has come and gone already though. I spend all summer looking forward to it, and then I felt like I blinked and it was over and all I have left are the very sore muscles and many bruises to show for it.