Big day for No. 2978

This will be quick because I'm headed to our MLB offices for 24-48 hours of Opening Day extravaganza as our season starts tonight with Mets at Cardinals. Some of my articles now on MLB.com homepage: this also this and this.

It is the best day of all on the calendar, the day life begins again.

And on this day, it has special meaning for me.

It is April 1, the four-month anniversary of my Dec. 1 decision to break a box of Kools in half outside my new Upper West Side brownstone and join the massive legion of distance runners around the world. I didn't really know what to expect but I knew I wanted to rediscover the athlete inside of me.

Today I celebrated by running my first 10K under an hour, my seventh of nine 2007 New York Road Runner qualifiers for guaranteed eligibility in the 2008 New York City Marathon. My net time in the Scotland Run 10K was around 57 minutes, although I am unofficial on that because it only lists Finish Time, and the results say 1:01.17 (pace 9:53). That's what the time was when I crossed the mat, I believe, but I crossed the start line a good seven minutes behind the horn, so if there is no net time posted then I'm going with 57 even for now and will contact NYRR and figure this one out for sure.

And believe it or not, I had no intention of running this race. I developed shin splints in my left leg on Tuesday. I took three days off and it felt like three weeks. I was miserable waiting. I RICE'd it all week, at home and at work. I didn't want to take a chance on being less than 100% for the Brooklyn Half on April 14, so I planned to bag this. Then a good friend sent a kind message overnight with some wisdom about handling shinsplints, and she told me how she had been fine for one race after treating shinsplints the night before. Just seeing how someone else had run with determination made me see it differently. I read that message at 9 a.m., and at 9:20 I jogged over to Central Park, picked up my bib number and C-chip (I had registered long ago), and jumped into the 9 Minute group at the starting area by Tavern on the Green. It was nice to meet my friend Andrea there and I made her listen to a little bit of my Nano Red while we waited. She has a cool Forerunner and I will trade her a bunch of CDs for it.

I never felt my shinsplints the entire 6.2 mile loop around Central Park. It was beautiful. Chilly and overcast day, nice for running but let's get the heat in here. I labored in the third mile and had to walk briefly, otherwise I was running station-to-station, maybe one other cheat speedwalk. Four months later, I know that I am still getting my wind back, still becoming friends with my lungs. God knows I am trying. I would LOVE to run an entire race without stopping. And it never fails, I get in that zone the last miles of a race and have my groove on.

THEN something really funny happened. I went to the awards presentation area, and was one of those people who gave them their raffle number from the bib with about 10 seconds left. So they raffle all these awesome prizes, and sure enough, the emcee calls my bib number. It was a great day for No. 2978 at Central Park. I went up on the stage, got the pic taken, was given the envelope for some elaborate Scottish shawl, and then I saw that friend in the crowd there and went over to her and gave her the envelope. I told her it was the least I could do because she's an awesome friend and I knew I wouldn't have been there if not for her email that I read at 9 in the morning of a day I planned to miss a race. I'll post pics here later.

EVERYONE: Have an awesome Opening Day, and enjoy the start of the greatest MLB season ever. I hope your team wins, I hope you catch a foul ball this summer, I hope you go to the ballpark on a date or maybe get proposed to there, I hope you get lots of autographs, I hope you have special memories that last forever and that you share them with family and friends. Baseball is the greatest game on Earth, and I think running is right up there now.  :)

I leave you with this email that was among those I received over the weekend -- from a fan in Italy. I think it says it all:

Hi, Mark!
at last....
let's go the Baseball...
to start from tomorrow...
for my fantastic YANKEES...
the pasion forever....NYY

kiss.at everything....yankees!

ilaria

from PARMA /Italy