A walk with ten runs and a pizza

Can today’s walk count as train­ing? Well, of course it can, and it does. I chose to walk as my pri­ma­ry trans­porta­tion today, so even if most «train­ing runs» don’t include a stop for piz­za and a nine-inning ball game, well, that just means most peo­ple don’t have quite as good a time when they train as I do.

I was invit­ed tonight to see the Giants play the Wash­ing­ton Nation­als. Of course, such an oppor­tu­ni­ty is not to be missed. I nev­er acquired a taste for watch­ing sports on tele­vi­sion but there’s not much in the world bet­ter than an evening at the ball­park. Since I com­mon­ly walk or run out to AT&T Park where the Giants play, I decid­ed to walk down to meet my friend and walk back home.

On the way down the hill, a guy on foot stopped to ask me direc­tions. He was going almost exact­ly the wrong way but he had­n’t gone far past his des­ti­na­tion. Once he got turned around, I con­tin­ued on towards Chi­na Basin.

In anoth­er case of strange tim­ing this evening, both on my way to the ball­park and on my way back a train came through just as I crossed the tracks. Not the same instant of course—I did sur­vive to tell the tale—but both times the sig­nals start­ed flash­ing just as I got across the tracks. If I’d been a few sec­onds lat­er I’d have had to wait for the trains to pass.

Din­ner was at Ami­ci’s. They make a brick-oven piz­za much like the piz­za I grew up with back in New Haven. Those who say that New York City has the best piz­za in the world have not made the trip up I‑95 to New Haven. There are some sim­i­lar­i­ties between New York piz­za and New Haven piz­za, but the brick ovens make all the dif­fer­ence in the world.

The Giants lost, but that nev­er stops it from being a good time at the park. It was not Lince­cum’s day. Though he threw some good pitch­es, he was incon­sis­tent tonight and let the Nation­als’ run­ners steal more bases than I’ve seen stolen in one game. In just one inning Lince­cum let run­ners steal three bases, and those stolen bases led to runs. By the time Lince­cum came out in the fifth inning, the Nation­als were win­ning 6 – 0. 

The bot­tom of the fifth inning start­ed out with a homer by Uribe fol­lowed imme­di­ate­ly by a sur­prise dou­ble by #1 Moli­na. The morale in the stands improved con­sid­er­ably. Though Moli­na did­n’t make it home, it felt like the tide was turn­ing.  6 – 1 is a big improve­ment over 6 – 0, and get­ting a fresh pitch­er bred some opti­mism. The Giants kept giv­ing us rea­son for hope; the sixth inning sent two triples right past the Nation­als’ SF-native cen­ter field­er Nyjer Morgan. 

Alas, «cause for opti­mism» did not trans­late to runs, and the Nation­als came away with a 7 – 3 vic­to­ry over Los Gigantes.

My calves are so tight I’m glad I did­n’t try to log more than this three mile walk today. I’m try­ing to keep mov­ing and at least some­what active even as I give myself the rest I need to come back from the edge of over­train­ing. Hope­ful­ly tomor­row my calves will feel ready for a some­what longer go, because the rest of me is champ­ing at the bit. If my calves are still tight maybe I’ll go for a few bare­foot laps in the grass and save the return to dis­tance for tomor­row. There’s a 5K race on Sun­day I want to run, and I’d like to be fresh for it.