Hustling

Running, running and running...




This week is my official first week of spring. Newness abounds!

We've been blessed with about a week and a half of beautiful spring weather - high 50's, low 60's and SUNNY! Aaahh... I've been working in our backyard, prepping the ground for the building of the new, gigantic play structure. Planning out some landscaping changes (waiting on Eric's mom for help!).  Last week I was thinking, "I really need to start thinking about how to make a raised bed vegetable planter" and what do you know? The next day in the paper there was an article about how to make a raised bed vegetable planter! One of the many things on my plate.

Saturday is my first real 5K.  "Real" meaning my first 5K that I actually plan to run in it's entirity. I have to admit that 8 weeks ago or so when I started training to do this, I didn't really think I could. And now I am 5 days away from greatness! In 2 weeks I've gone from running 1.7 miles outside with a pretty strong side cramp at the end to running just short of 3 miles with no side cramp at all! I have confidence. And I love the sense of disbelief that I have had every single time when I have checked my mileage (either with my car or on this site my friend Hailey told me about: Map My Run). I check mileage AFTER I have run and every time I make myself double check for accuracy because it doesn't seem possible that I actually ran that far! And, more importantly, I ran that far without passing out, puking, major side or knee pain. I am actually enjoying this! Hooray! I've been keeping track of my runs at Log Your Run because I'm a "keeping track" kind of person.

Also today... first day of softball practice! Yep, I've committed myself to 8 weeks of after school practices and games.  Thankfully a school mom is going to help me with the kids so that is a big stress taken care of (thank you, Pam!) - not having to worry about teaching middle school girls to pitch AND make sure my kids aren't running around in the street or throwing themselves off the school playground.

Getting ready for these first practices, looking through equipment, etc. has remined me of "the good old days" of playing softball, of pretty much living softball.  The song above was one of the songs I used to listen to pre-game in college before pitching warmups.  It still keys me up to this day. Sad. I guess I've become "mom who relives the glory days by coaching". The strangest thing about reminiscing about old softball stories, victories and defeats, friendships and all the rest is that I didn't meet my husband until after I graduated from college and finished playing softball.  He has never seen "Softball Amanda", though I'm sure at this point the hardcore, competitive softball fiend version of myself wouldn't surprise him.  I am hoping that this will be the first step in developing some competitive, softball loving, hardcore middle school girls! (Maybe not quite as competitive or hardcore as I was at this age. I might get fired if they do some of the things I did!)

This will be an interesting experience for me, to be sure.  The girls are in middle school, but many have never played organized softball before. Lots of chances to teach fundamentals.  Lots of chances to use the word "hustle". I was thinking it might be fun to pick a practice at random and say "hustle" as many times as I can and see if anyone says anything. You know, keep things exciting for myself!

I went past the field around lunchtime and found that it has been torn apart by the grounds crew. Practice plan, scrapped. I won't know until I get there in an hour or so what, if any, of the field will be in usable condition. Welcome to the first practice, ladies! Here's a big mound of dirt!

A couple of pictures from my college softball days.  I have tons more, but don't know how to work our scanner!

That's me, batting!

Post game, me and my catcher, Lori. We're showing off matching knee bruises. Hard to see here, but I've actually got stitching marks from the ball on my right knee.