Thursday, August 9, 2007

Summer of Baseball 2007

As many of you know, the first part of our summer was quite fully occupied with baseball.  David played for the Tri-Town 9-year-old all star team, which involved 15 games over 6 weeks, and many practices.  He had a ball, and along with playing the game, has become quite a fan.  He never misses a chance to catch a Mets or Yankees game on television.

In keeping with that theme, my birthday present this year was three tickets to the Mets vs. the Cincinnati Reds on July 15.  Stephen and David accompanied me to Shea Stadium that Sunday afternoon while Lisa stayed home with Nina and Matthew, who had had quite enough baseball, thank you, with all of David's games.  Here are some pictures from the day.

Mixed Results

My up and down 2007 triathlon season continues.  As faithful readers of State of Nature will recall, I suffered a minor bike crash during my first race of the season, the Columbia Triathlon.  Two races in July gave me opportunities for redemption.  The first, the Randolph Lake triathlon, is a sprint race that takes place only 20 minutes from our front door.  This one went really well for me, as I finished fourth overall and first in the 40-44 age group.  Full results are here, if you're interested, but even better is the headline I got in the local paper

I looked to build on that result in the very competitive New Jersey State Triathlon on July 22, but it was not to be.  After a good swim, I was in the middle of one of my best bike rides ever when my race was derailed.  A policeman at an intersection had a mental lapse and pointed a group of four of us in the wrong direction (left when we were supposed to go straight).  By the time we realized we were off course, and doubled back to rejoin the race, we had added almost five miles to the ride.  Needless to say, after all that, I did not place well (look for me down at number 66).  But taking the positive, my bike speed overall was excellent -- although for 28 miles instead of 23.5 -- and I managed a solid sub-40 minute 10K run despite my disappointment.