Set Me Up 3.38

Braves Rookie of the Year candidates

He has struck out 14.3 batters per game entering Friday night’s action. The only reliever who has struck out at least 13 per nine with a lower walk rate than Kimbrel’s is Sergio Romo , who has pitched just 36 innings compared to Kimbrel’s 54, and as a specialist Romo faces primarily right-handed batters whereas Kimbrel faces whomever is batting in the ninth. Kimbrel has produced such a high level due to absolutely dominant performances since June 11. Up until that date, Kimbrel had a respectable 3.38 ERA and five blown saves over 32 innings pitched. Since then, Kimbrel has not allowed a run over 22 innings, while racking up 38 strikeouts and just six walks. In June and July alone, Kimbrel was worth 1.4 WAR, which is as much as all but nine other relievers have been worth all season. The fact that Kimbrel won the Rookie of the Month award in June while pitching to a 1.93 ERA and a 25/5 strikeout-to-walk ratio, but he lost the award to Freeman in July while pitching to a 0.00 ERA and a 19/3 strikeout/walk ratio is rather odd. Kimbrel improving his performance in July compared after that June was certainly unexpected, but it was also rather welcome for the Braves, who had starter struggles in July to deal with, and on-base problems as well. The Braves bullpen has been one of the main reasons that they are the National League’s wild-card leaders to this point. They currently have the second-lowest bullpen ERA to that of the San Diego Padres , who lost a top reliever in Mike Adams at the deadline and may concede the top spot before season’s end. Additionally, the Braves’ bullpen has the lowest FIP in baseball at 3.00, xFIP at 3.20, and SIERA at 2.86 -- the three best ERA estimators out there. Most of the bullpen’s success is due to the lethal combination of Kimbrel, Jonny Venters and Eric O’Flaherty. Venters was an All-Star along side Kimbrel, but O’Flaherty has pitched to an ERA under 1.00, which is astounding for a lefty one-out reliever turned set-up man. The combination of these three, which has been deemed “O’Ventbrel” by Braves’ announcers and fans, may potentially be the best combination of back-end relievers in the entire game. Kimbrel may end up losing out to Freeman or Danny Espinosa in the Rookie of the Year balloting, but unless something drastic occurs, Kimbrel will have one of the top rookie seasons for a reliever in recent memory.

28k zig zag run and 6k in 29.39=a better week

I also guessed that back to back long runs would simulate a 6 foot race a bit, and take me into that running on tired lkegs world, which could be handy training, plus keep my slim hopes of getting the 3000km in the January leg of the 100 day challenge alive, and help build my base for 6 foot...plus hopefully set me up for a much better week. Very humid but otherwise cool afternoon conditions. Phonecalss to my Dad, sister and wife ensured my early slow jog was very slow indeed. After a slow grind to the 10.25km turnaround in 1.34 on my local trails I resolved to bring it home a lot stronger and did so as the splits show (about 17 minutes quicker), a pretty big negative split...An extremely relaxed OD/LSD long run at very low intensity but mission accomplished in that I simulated running 49km or similiar... Now thats more of an LFD type effort for me. The hills of the zig zag road took a lot out of me on this one. I struggled up in 23min, so much so that the C-team had finished their “hug break” by the time I got up there, and then we continued onto Embers cafe I think near Lenori Rd. I’m guessing a lot on the distance and course, but the mapmyrun route I found with a google search seems to confirm it. Hills towards the end climbing out of the Helena Vally ensured the heart rate stayed high for a long run. Not far off the intensity I used at 6 inch last year. A hard run, had some fun on the steep downhill trails after the quarry hammering it downhill. It appears my downhill running skills are superior to the others, but on the uphill I am walk-breaking it too much, although I did run all the way up most of the zig Zag, and I am way slower than everyone else. I will gain some significant hill climbing and general conditioning gains from that run, so very worthwhile session, I’d say possibly my best run so far this year. The views from the top of the zig zag down the scarp to the city and the airport are totally awesome, Ive finally done something Ive wanted to do for at least a year, and thats run up the zig zag. Also got educated about the Raison d’être for Comrades, so a wonderful mornings run for sure…A few more like that and my 6 foot prep is looking a lot better. Course PB! (yeah it was a pretty soft one and Ive only done this course 3 times, but still nice to raise some sort of bar) Felt pretty yucky this morning, and with a resting heart rate of 45 (compared to 39 on Tuesday), didn’t have high expectations. Didn’t have much time available before work, so instead of getting on the trails, or braving the sprinklers and dogs, I decided to do a quick 6k on my hilly mostly bitumen street circuit as it would be done in about 30 minutes, plus I could chase the soft course PB, which would motivate me to attack a bit more. Put bodyglide on just in case, as I still have all the scabs from the chafing on Tuesday where I drew blood in about 10-30 little pinprick spots. No chafing issue this time, so thats good. The weather was awesome for fast running, cool temperature, and a little light rain. Perfect. Tried to take it out at a solid pace, without going for broke. Was a bit surprised to get through the first 1k in under 4.30 even on downhill. Backed off a bit for the next 2k, but tried not to slow up too much even though its a climb to the summit of the course. Stayed under 5.30’s which is perfect, and I knew I had the chance to not only knock off the 31.13 from 2009, but that I was an outside chance of cracking 30 minutes if I could negative split enough…tried to work the mostly downhill K’s hard and as a result was able to dip under 5min per K. Was hurting a fair bit by here, and when I hit 5k in 25.16, I was thinking its going to be tough to go sub 5 min for the last uphill climb to the finish, I was thinking 30.30 at this stage….Went hard at it, and checked my wristwatch again at 27.29 and 29.07, and both times I am thinking, hey I have a sub 30 here if I can hold it together…Hurting a fair bit as I climbed the steep road to the finish, but tried to kick pretty hard to the line, and was very,very pleased to land a 29.39 and a big negative split of 1min 07 secs, on a day I could so easily have just gone straight to work, instead of bothering as I really didn’t feel like running much…4.56 per K is not that crash hot, but, I know it was a good run for where I was at. So thats 2 out of 5 ok days this week, and still the weekend to come….Thanks God. After 7 days of not running, I knew today would not be easy, but woke up before 5am today, so decided to finally do what I have been meaning to do for weeks, but most days have failed to so far, partly due to domestic worries/hassles dominating things in recent weeks. Still have unresolved matters to deal with in a big way, but have a little more hope today that things might finally get back onto an even keel financially after the difficult last 2 months, although I still see a lot of yet to be resolved issues. Wasn’t expecting much, but decided to give the tough trails a miss, and take the easy option of getting on the grass of the local oval and try for a solid 15 laps worth. As expected my conditioning was not very good after 7 days of not running, although I did wake up with a RHR of 39 this morning, which is the first time under 40 beats per minute this year, maybe thats a result of the extra sleep I got last week, cos I sure havent done any training in the last 7 days to get it down although the 25k long run and the 6×500m earlier this month may have helped, plus some of the long walks I did while getting my car worked on last week…. Was happy my first lap dipped under 3.20 but wasn’t really feeling motivated to do much more than “plod” today anyhow, main aim was to try and stay under 4 min per 700m, and hopefully put a few laps on the board around about the 3.30 per 700m (5.00 per K) pace. I did as planned. Didn’t really surge much, except for a little after 6km when I drank my 600ml of water. The sprinklers and dogs were there as usual, but mostly didn’t really matter today. I think I am getting better at coping with the sprinklers, and maybe even the dogs I had to stop for today which were off the lead and tried to attack…Gave one owner a bit of an earful today, but overall probably didnt cost me more than a few seconds today, and they were just your average dog today, nothing really bad. Pleased that (as shown by the 3.5k splits) my last 3.5k was actually faster than my middle 3.5k, so I was finding some rhythm as the run went on, and the nice soft grassy surface is really nice to run on. Perfect time of the day to be running, especially as I got out the door, before my wonderful 3 year old woke up. Did not kick for home, and the finishing heart rate of 162 is pretty low, so certainly not a time trial run, more of a mongrel cross-breed of a tempo/easy run. Had elements of both but wasn’t either really. More of a “try and get back on track” run really…hahaha I got really bad chafing on one leg for some reason after this one so might have to take a day off tomorrow to settle that… I looked back through my old training diaries and turns out I’ve only done this 15 lapper at the local oval once before in mid 2009. That day I did 57min with a finishing heart rate of 177, so I guess I can claim almost a 3 min course PB on a day my finishing heart rate was 15 beats lower, and I wasn’t really that interested in attacking, so its obvious how much better a level I am at 2 years later, which is encouraging, but still like Hewitt getting 2 matchpoints in the 5th set against Nalbandian (and LLeyton should have won in the 4th set actually), I am not pushing home the advantage and progressing to the next level like I want to. I know what I want to do, I just need to do it, at least 4-5 days per week, and I should hit a new level. Hoping I can crank up to the next level, raise the bar, find the next gear etc before this summer is over…Today was a step in the right direction, but its a long road. Onwards… 5.11 K's is about a 51-52min 10k pace and I think I'd race about 48-49min for a 10k this week (which is why I am not racing, cant be bothered until I am back with some sort of chance of 44min or better form)...Hr was only 162 at the end of this though, and my racing HR is about mid 170's or higher, so not a maximal effort that 10.5k by any stretch of the imagination. Pretty satisfied with the week 3 train ing, but I still need to ramp it up a whole lot more especially with trackwork although I am focusing on building some base for 6 foot at the moment, so pace and speed not a high priority, although hoping to get after bthe track racing as well soon, but not been ready to do in the first 3 weeks of January as yet...

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