Home Run

Where I come from, a home run is a run that starts at home. Baseball, like cricket, is a sport played overseas by men in funny outfits -- if you aren't accustomed from an early age to watch players with tight pants and long socks, you find them amusing. We watched ``Rain Man'' dubbed in French, and Dustin Hoffman's mumbling about ``first base'' and ``second base'' were no more than the ramblings of an autistic genius. We understood his character had an exceptional, detailed memory of games played long ago, which was essential to understanding the film, but that's how far our understanding of baseball went.

Then, I met a Phillies fan, we got engaged and I married him in September, few weeks before the team clinched the National League pennant and made it to the World Series for the first time in 15 years. (Note: I'm not implying there's a connection between the two). I, who learned about the meaning of ``pennant'' about ten days ago, am wearing a red Phillies baseball cap as I write.


My earliest memory of baseball was in the summer of 1990, when I spent a three-week vacation with an American family in New Fairfield, Connecticut. They took me to a game in New York -- it might have been the Yankees or the Mets, I don't remember. My first impression was being shocked that spectators moved around constantly and left their seats to get food or drinks. I thought it was rude to the players. The dad was sitting next to me, trying to explain the rules to me. My English was high-school English and I had never watched a baseball game in my life. He lost me after the first sentence but I nodded to whatever he said and he went on for what was probably hours. When I realized how long the game lasts -- a lifetime -- I changed my mind about leaving my seat.

I played softball in the yard of a family in Vermont a few years later and I wasn't more knowledgeable. I can run, but I was always running at the wrong time, so they established a rule for me: I would run only when they said ``run, run, run.'' Otherwise I'd stay put.
I lived in New York City for more than three years, so I became aware of which baseball team was losing or winning just by walking past newsstands or checking news on the local TV, New York 1. I knew who Joe Torre was because he was news.


Living for several years in the U.S. didn't prepare me for being a Phillies fan, though. A Google search on ``long-suffering Phillies'' yields 18,300 results. The team was the first to lose 10,000 games. If Philadelphia loses the World Series to Tampa Bay, it will mark the 100th season of professional sport in this city without a championship. Being a Phillies fan, I learned early on, requires knowing your statistics. I listened to local radio, I read local newspapers and I heard my husband talking about the Phillies. So, naturally, I expected them to lose every single game they played. To my utter astonishment, they made it to the World Series.


Something did prepare me for being a Phillies fan. I am French. We invented fatalism and cynicism. The last time a French won Roland Garros, the French tennis Open, was in 1983. The winner, Yannick Noah, is now a successful pop singer. His son, Joakim, born in 1985, is a professional NBA player with the Chicago Bulls. The long-suffering French tennis fans, meanwhile, are still waiting for a French to win the French Open. The national French soccer team, ``Les Bleus,'' won the world's soccer Cup, (la Coupe du Monde) in 1998, a seismic event in French sports and culture. At the following Cup, in 2002, the French team was humiliated, losing in the first round without winning a game nor scoring one goal. One of my earliest childhood sports memory is the 1982 soccer Cup's semifinal between France and West Germany. The French were leading 3-1 in the ``prolongations'' (overtime), the game was almost over and my parents were getting ready to get the Champagne out of the fridge, when the Germans scored twice in a row. Germany eventually won during the penalty shots, crushing France. Yes, I think I'm ready to be a Phillies fan.

Allez les Phillies.

Shoe-Lace Challenge: My First Duathlon

Last Sunday was my first duathlon (run-bike-run).
I love running. I love cycling. I hate swimming. The duathlon seemed like a dream discipline to me. Except I failed to train in shoe-lace tying. Of the top 40 women who finished the race, only three of us took more than 2 minutes -- 2:02 in my case -- to make the transition between the bike ride and the second run. Of the top 10 (I finished 9th), I was the slowest in both transition periods. The fastest competitor in both transitions was the overall winner of the duathlon.
Is there a message here?

I'm a long-distance runner. My favorite bike ride is climbing a pass in my native Alps mountains. The duathlon, which was part of Philadelphia Women's Triathlon, consisted of a short run (2 miles, or 3.2 km), a flat bike ride (17-mile, or 27.4k) and another short run (3.1 miles, or 5k). I was clearly looking for trouble.
About 200 women lined up at the start of the duathlon at 8 a.m. My number was 73, which happens to be the year I was born and the number of my ``departement'' in France (similar to U.S. counties, with a number attached). The sky was sunny, the temperature was 74 degrees Fahrenheit (23 degrees Celsius) and the crowd of supporters was disproportionately composed of men with strollers, children and dogs. My friend H. and the 700 other participants in the triathlon -- the real thing -- were getting ready to plunge into a 77.5 degree F water. I admired H. for her courage to swim upstream the Schuylkill river and felt like a sissy for skipping the wet part of the race. But I was glad to stay dry.

Not for long. The first mile was painful. In half-marathons and marathons, I have time to ramp up my speed to reach a cruising pace. In a 2-miler race, there's no ramping up. By the time I found some form of stabilization -- a pace that wasn't killing my legs and allowed me to breathe -- I was almost done, running through the transition zone to my bike's rack. I was dizzy and sweating as I struggled to put on my biking shoes and helmet. I got the bike off the rack and ran to the road where I could mount it. That, I thought, will give my legs a break.

Not really. The first mile on the bike was painful. In fact, the first 8.5 mile loop felt like a sprint. My muscles were not responding the way I ordered. My thighs were burning. I kept motivated by remembering running the 2007 Philadelphia half-marathon on the same course. I also spent most of the ride racing with another duathlete. We passed each other again and again. About two-thirds into the ride, we were passed by a triathlete. She was wearing a swimming suit and was so fast she might as well have been riding a motorbike. Her speed and power were sensational. Another followed. Same style. Same speed. When a group of women passed at a relatively slower pace (one of them was 50: our age was written with markers on the back of our calves), I tried to stick with them. When I dismounted my bike, I felt like I had no legs. They were gone.

The first mile of the second run was the most painful. My legs felt as stiff as two wooden sticks. At mile 1, I took from the race staff what I thought was a paper cup of water. It was a drink that reminded me of Red Bull, which I hate, and strawberry chewing-gum. It didn't help. I finished the 3.1-mile run in 21:53, at a pace of 7:04. That's just 31 seconds a mile less than my pace in the 2008 Boston marathon. I've always had a lot of respect for triathletes. Now I worship them.

My first duathlon statistics:
9th overall, out of 206.
2nd in my age category.
2-mile run: 13:15 at a pace of 6:38 (15.1 km/h)
Transition: 1:46
17-mile bike ride: 51:47 at 19.7 miles/h
Transition 2: 2:02
3.1-mile run: 21:53 at a pace of 7:04 (13.7 km/h)