Doing

The Presidential Pitch



Phillies Open­er, orig­i­nal­ly uploaded by hhan­ni­gan.

This was just my sec­ond Open­ing Day game, and, boy, was it a doozy.

See that guy stand­ing alone on the mound? Yeah, that’s Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma! I snapped it from our seats along the third base line, cour­tesy of for­mer Nation­als right field­er Eli­jah Dukes!

I nev­er thought I’d attend anoth­er Open­ing Day game after my expe­ri­ence back in ’06. The game was ter­ri­ble. The weath­er was worse. Want to know how to fix that? Play against the Nation­als instead of the Cards!

Yes, the low­ly Nation­als were the per­fect match for the Phils, sur­rend­ing 11 runs, includ­ing a grand slam to our new mint­ed third base­man Placido Polan­co. Wel­come back! Hal­la­day did­n’t dis­ap­point either, turn­ing in a sol­id start after a shaky first inning. 

It was a real­ly spe­cial day for me and my fam­i­ly. I’m thrilled that we got the chance to see a bonafide Open­ing Day game.

Still Recovering from February



Snow, orig­i­nal­ly uploaded by hhan­ni­gan.

Sor­ry for not hav­ing writ­ten more often last month. I feel like I’m still men­tal­ly dig­ging out from all that snow. This week has erased almost all mem­o­ry of 24+ hour snows, but I still har­bor a fear that we may get nipped again before March is out.

In the mean­time, bask in the glo­ri­ous sunshine!

Happy New Year!

Helen and I spent a qui­et evening in our neigh­bor­hood. We ate a deli­cious din­ner at Mem­phis Tap­room — short ribs on a seafood grits bed — and I had a flight of Gift of the Magi, Port San­ta’s Lit­tle Helper, and Nøgne Ø‘s God Jul. The beer was amaz­ing as well. Our sec­ond New Year’s Eve din­ner was just as great as our first.

We can’t say enough how much we love that place and the peo­ple who work there. It’s like an exten­sion of our liv­ing room and kitchen. It’s our Cheers. We get great ser­vice, great food, and great beer. It’s hard to believe it’s been open less than two years. It feels like it’s been there forever.

We spent the rest of the evening at home, watch­ing movies, drink­ing beer, wait­ing for Dick Clark and Ryan Seacrest to count down to the New Year. It’s a minor mir­a­cle that Helen and I were able to stay awake to see the ball drop. Char­lie’s usu­al­ly wak­ing us by 4:30 in the morning!

The start of 2010 was much more com­fort­able than where we found our­selves on Y2K. As Helen and I sat on the couch, watch­ing tele­vi­sion, I could­n’t help but think how lost we were last year after we board­ed the R5 in the wrong direc­tion, jumped off at Wayne Junc­tion, and found our­selves strand­ed there until Helen’s aunt and uncle picked us up. We did­n’t even have cell­phones back then!

To add insult to injury, we end­ed up there after going to see G. Love at the Elec­tric Fac­to­ry. No fur­ther com­ment necessary.

As we start 2010, we’re thank­ful for our friends and fam­i­ly who’ve been there for us all along. We feel very lucky in these try­ing times. Here’s to a great 2010 and the decade ahead!

I Ran My 2nd Philadelphia Marathon

Want a marathon pro tip? Have a race plan. It’s the only way you’re going to live to tell the tale.

You know what I did wrong this year? I did­n’t have a race plan. Unlike last year, the world inter­vened, mak­ing it hard­er for me to train at the lev­el I did in 2008. It rained fre­quent­ly and hard. I had a beau­ti­ful baby boy. I came down with a bad head cold at the end of October.  Yes, I did the best I could con­sid­er­ing the cir­cum­stances, but when I caught a cold after a few too many runs in the Octo­ber rain com­bined with a baby who’s just learn­ing to sleep on his own, marathon train­ing kind of goes out the window.

What was the out­come? A com­plete­ly respectable 3:35 marathon. I did­n’t set the world ablaze like I did last year when I ran a heart­break­ing 3:13 and just missed qual­i­fy­ing for Boston in my debut, but I man­aged to main­tain my dig­ni­ty and come in with a time most ama­teur run­ners would kill for. I’m not ashamed of that.

I am ashamed of how stu­pid­ly I ran. I met my friend Pat at the start. He was shoot­ing for a 3:40 time, and that sound­ed rea­son­able to me after tak­ing so much time off. I wish I could’ve main­tained that out­look for more than a mile. I took off hell-bent for the 3:30 group just as I hit Delaware Ave. I felt good! I fig­ured I might just uncork a decent run! I was in for a surprise.

I caught up to the 3:30 group by mile 5. I still felt great, but that’s prob­a­bly because I was­n’t pay­ing any atten­tion to my wild­ly fluc­tu­at­ing splits. I sud­den­ly believed that I could catch the 3:20 group by, say, mile 12. And thus end­ed any chance of me recov­er­ing any sem­blance of a race plan.

What hap­pened from that point for­ward can be summed up pret­ty eas­i­ly. I took the fly and die approach. I ran very hard right up until about mile 18, where­upon I real­ized how dif­fi­cult the next 8 miles were going to be. Ordi­nar­i­ly, I run 8 miles an hour. Last Sun­day, I found myself walk­ing and jog­ging just to be sure I would fin­ish the run. I learned a hard lesson.

I crossed the fin­ish line in agony, but I fin­ished. I also real­ized that the OCD lev­el of dis­ci­pline that I brought to my first marathon is a must if I’m going to achieve that sort of suc­cess again. Am I dis­cour­aged? Not at all. I’m invig­o­rat­ed. I’m excit­ed to train hard this win­ter and I plan on enter­ing some spring races. Bring it on!