One of the many perks that comes along with having a graduate student as a spouse is that we both still get to participate in intramural sports. In the Fall, our game was softball, but last night officially kicked off the Spring season of dodgeball.

Ames and I have really been enjoying the exercise and competition, but it’s also been fun to design a shirt together each semester to go with our goofy co-ed team names. Last year, our team was Not in the face, we’re models and this is the design we came up with:

This year, our team name is Oldies but Goodies. Our friend Ashley came up with the idea of an old guy in a walker, and this is what I drew in Illustrator. The free font, Team Spirit helped to finish the design:

We actually had so many girls from the ChemE department come out this year that my wife and her close friend Eyma decided decided to branch off and start a girls only team. I suggested the name War Kittens, Eyma suggested the lolcats picture and we all agreed that the Chinese Take Away font added a lot to the design.

Pretty intimidating if you ask me…as much as we love lolcats though, the true inspiration behind that team name was this most-excellent Capital One commercial.

In case you’re wondering, the Oldies but Goodies were victorious over a bunch of law students last night, winning 9-8 in overtime. The War Kittens are getting together tonight to iron on their t-shirt transfers and have their first game tomorrow evening. Should be a fun season.

For anybody who sits in front of a computer all day, it’s important to get exercise during non-work hours. With that said, I’ve done very little to make working out a critical part of my week. If anything even remotely requires attention, exercise is the first thing to get dropped.

When I do have time to exercise, I generally prefer going for a run through our beautiful neighborhood or tossing my mountain bike in the back of the truck and heading over to the nearby trails at Harbison State Forrest. I’ve never competed in either of those arenas, but I’ve been slowly building up my endurance and can now run about 4 miles. I’m rather proud of that accomplishment, but the idea of running 6.2 miles (10K) by the end of March sounds like a big challenge. One that I’ll start training for this week.

How did that happen? Well a bunch of our friends from the University of South Carolina have been talking about participating in the Cooper River Bridge 10K (bridgerun.com) in Charleston, SC on March 21, 2007. Some planned to walk and some planned to run. I wasn’t planning to do either, but yesterday Amy’s friend Adriana said she would walk it if Amy signed up, and Amy said she would go if I would run it…and if Amy wants me to do it, then I’ll certainly give it my best effort. So here I am, a novice runner, trying to figure out how to train for a 10K. I don’t plan to really compete with anyone there, but as a personal goal, I’d like to be able to run the whole thing. One of our friends recommended Hal Higdon’s 10K novice training program. Fortunately, it’s an 8 week program and there’s just enough weeks before the race for me to go through the entire thing. I plan to push each day back so that the weeks start with Sunday and end with Saturday, since that’s the race day. In an unrelated turn of events, I also just ordered my first “real” mountain bike last weekend: A 19” Gary Fisher Piranha from Harrell’s Bicycle World. I’ve been talking about getting a decent bike since before we moved to South Carolina, and after a lot of research and test rides, the Piranha seemed like the best bang for my buck. I’ll probably post more about the new bike after I’ve ridden it a few times, but you can bet that on my cross training days I’ll be tearin’ up the trails.

Anybody have any advice for this first time 10K runner and novice mountain biker?

Oh my what a game! With all the hype and gloomy predictions, I honestly thought Ohio State was going to give the Gators a good fight. When the Buckeyes returned the opening kick for a field goal in the first few seconds of the game it looked like they had some strong momentum. From the next kickoff on though it was Florida who dominated. Play after play, the Florida offense hammered on the Buckeye defense. When their Heismann led offence did get on the field, they were limited to few, if not negative yards before having to punt. It was as if the Buckeyes had no energy against Florida last night. Perhaps they didn’t stay hydrated?

Whatever the excuse, the Florida Gators came out and played a solid ball game. No tricks, no smoke and mirrors. When Leak was on the field, they mostly passed. When Tebow came in, they ran it…usually right up the middle. And they did it all night long. 41-14! Go Gators!