Thursday, June 23, 2011

Softball woes

Last night was my regular softball league night (where our team is 2-6). Benny Baseball runs the team and has taken on the responsibility of getting everyone there, not an enviable role. Last night however, Benny's dad had some medical troubles (he's ok though) and Benny wasn't there. Another guy took over the team for the night, but unfortunately we only had 9 people there (you normally play 10). In this league, you can play with 8 even, but the 9th and 10th spot in the batting order are automatic outs. In our case, just the last spot was an automatic out and it killed us in game one.

Another thing that killed us in game one was my fielding....for the second straight week. I'm not entirely sure what's going on, but I'm really struggling getting to balls, using good form and reacting....not good qualities at third base. It's almost comical it's been so bad. I've run into this problem before, on another league night last year, where the lighting is just up to par. I'm wondering if it's a similar situation, but I don't think so.

Both weeks I've been awful (two of the last three with the middle week rained out), I've gone running the day before and my legs have been a little tired. Possibly more important is some lower back pain, or tightness more accurately, that's keeping me from bending over as quickly and easily as needed. In tournaments I haven't had the same issues and I rarely do anything physical the day before a tournament.

Whatever the reason, I need to start getting better. I also need to keep running though and get in better shape for the wedding and just to be in better shape in general. The two goals may be at odds, we'll see.

4 comments:

terri said...

That's frustrating! Maybe you just need to figure out how to balance the softball and the running so you're not doing the running right before a game. Of course, if the answer were that simple, you wouldn't have written this blog post. Hope you can figure things out.

el supremo de nm said...

Maybe you're working out too much. As you get older your need more rest to let your body recuperate.

Or it can be just old man time creeping up on you!

2006 Boundary Waters Canoe Trip said...

What kind of running are you doing? Intervals are the most effective method for training. For what you're doing, I'd recommend trying a few distances from 50 to 200 meters, with a full recovery between each interval.

For a while I was doing stuff like: 400, 300, 200, 100, maybe followed by a couple of 50 yard hills. Lately, with the Freedom Four (4 mile race on July 4) coming up, it's been 300 meters 4 times -- about 5 minutes of rest in between each. Yesterday, just to see if it was working, I comfortably ran the fastest 3 miles I've run in several years, about two minutes per mile faster than my pace in last year's Freedom Four.

After the 4th, I plan to mainly run shorter intervals (15 to 70 meters) to try to get in shape for softball/baseball/track.

alexis said...

I think on baseball the best advice I can give is stay quiet. :)