Welcome to Spring! It couldn’t have come soon enough, as far as I’m concerned. You may recall last week we had SNOW, and just 4 days ago the wind and rain and temperatures were that of a normal January day. And it sucked. Like whoa.
Now we’re going to get a week of warm temperatures, which is nice because most of next week I’ll be working nights, enabling me to rest and relax outside during the day. Which I will undoubtedly spend sleeping. Come on, summer!
The warmer weather does enable me to exercise more; I ran twice this week in the cold and was very unhappy about it, although I did set personal bests for 3.3 miles and 1.1 miles. Yesterday I ran a mile in 8 minutes 27 seconds, which is the fastest I’ve run a mile since 8th grade, when I managed a 7:45 once. At the time, I weighed maybe 130 pounds. I, uh, don’t weigh that little anymore.
Since I hate lifting weights, but want to exercise my arms and abs and back, I decided to supplement my running with some batting cage fun. I have the interesting problem of throwing left-handed but batting right; this is the result of teaching myself to hit when I was little by throwing the ball in the air with my left hand and swinging across my body at it. The end result of this is that I’ve always been next to useless from a baseball/softball perspective, since left-handers can’t play 2nd or 3rd base or shortstop (because a left hander throwing to first has to turn his body around before whipping the ball over, which takes extra time), and right-handed batters are as common as pigeons. (Not that this makes much difference in softball.)
Anyway, I thought it might be fun to actually learn to bat left-handed, thinking that as an actual lefty I would be a better hitter from that side, and also give myself the benefit of batting switch, so I can direct softballs to weaker fielders (who are invariably at first base and right field). So I’ve been swinging from the lefty side, and I can report the following: apparently there are muscles in my body, that you only use when batting left-handed, that have completely atrophied. Because I am in Pain.
I went to the cages on Monday and was completely crippled until Wednesday, including bizarre unexplained pain in my NECK muscles, which I had not believed were involved in the act of swinging a softball bat. I thought myself recovered today, so I went back, and within 20 swings I was reminded of why exercise makes Baby Jesus cry. Ow. I’d be in less pain if I had simply handed the bat to someone and told him to go to town on my arms and torso.
The lesson, as I believe I have mentioned: I’m a wuss.
