Niners, Melbourne, Homeland, 2012 running numbers

Shoutouts:

• Misadventures of the Johnson Jocks, who set a 7 minute PR and 2nd place female in 3:31:15 at the Yuma Territorial Marathon!  

49ers in the Super Bowl!
And the 49ers are in the Super Bowl on Sunday!  The Falcons game was extremely nerve racking, they jumped out to a huge 17-0 lead and the 49ers had to claw all the way back in the 2nd half to win 28-24!  I thought the 49ers would beat the Falcons by 7, though the Falcons really should have won that game - they gave it away to the 49ers by not throwing the ball as much in the 2nd half.  49ers couldn't guard Jones, White or Gonzalez at all. I'm happy for the gift though!  Any Falcons fans out there that can explain why they abandoned the passing game in the 2nd half?  

I think 49ers will beat Ravens by 7 in the Super Bowl 27-20.  I think Kaepernick and the 49ers running backs will have a big day running the ball to the outside. Ravens have monsters on the D line on the inside, though I think the Ravens linebackers speed is slower than some teams.  49ers might also be able to do play action pass bombs to Moss or Crabtree because of the strong running game that they likely will have.  The main part of the Ravens that scares me are their running backs - Rice, Pearce and Leach all can run the ball well.  Along this same line, the Ravens are great on doing screen passes to Rice.  I hope the 49ers concentrate on stopping the run by putting 7-8 guys in the box.  Then double cover Torrey Smith, and single cover Boldin and Jones.  And then hope Flacco makes an INT gift mistake to the 49ers.  My guess is that the 49ers will win the turnover battle, just like they did in Atlanta.  Main way I think Ravens will score is either a screen pass or run to Rice, bomb to Jones/Smith or a special teams TD by Jones.  

Though regardless of what happens on Sunday, it has been an amazing year.  The 49ers getting the bye to the 2nd round of the playoffs was massive for me.  And to me simply making the playoffs is a success, everything else is a bonus from there, since you never know what can happen in the playoffs.  Next year I'd say the 49ers are again likely the best team - they return substantially their entire team again I think, plus Kap will get a full year starting at QB.  Other teams to watch out for are Atlanta, Green Bay, New England, Denver, Seattle, Baltimore, Houston and Indy.  

Also, I joined the Ms. Zippy Super Bowl style miles of shame challenge haha.  Basically if your team loses, you run the losing difference in miles.  I'm running 7 miles on Super Bowl Sunday, so I'm covered if the team loses.  But they won't lose =).  

Melbourne trip:
I know I sort of left you guys hanging with my Melbourne posts - I was good about posting until the tennis started - I went to the Aussie Open tennis tourney for the 1st 4 days - had tickets to Laver day and Laver night, so saw tennis from 11 AM to midnight for 4 straight days lol.  I ended up seeing parts of 24 tennis matches, and while sometimes it was tiring, it reminded me of the feel of the Olympics - once you see a match you want to go to the next one to see the next player and to see how the tourney progresses.  It was an awesome time.  I'll do a full post soon with pics and everything, but wanted to post a couple of my favorite tennis pics here.

Rod Laver Arena packed for the Roger Federer 2nd round match - not a seat in the stadium anywhere

Yarra River

This is one of my favorite pics - The setting almost looked fake - this was at Show Court 3 for Madison Keys of the USA

This match was Brian Baker of the USA, who unfortunately later on in the match tore his meniscus cutting to his right, and has to be taken off in a wheelchair.  Awful to watch it happen live.  Sam Querrey of the USA advanced since Baker couldn't continue.

Monfils vs Dolgopolov at Margaret Court Arena - I was most excited to see Monfils over any other player, and I saw him in a gorgeous setting with the setting sun in the background.  Monfils played awesome, beating Dolgopolov in 4 exciting sets.

This was the first day of the tourney - this was the best seats we had on Laver - 7 rows back for Maria Sharapova's match.  She double bageled her opponent 6-0, 6-0 lol

Homeland season 1:
After 24 ended 3 years ago, I really didn't have a TV show that I thought was really awesome - since then multiple people have told me to watch Homeland, including Twenty Six and Then Some, so I finally decided to take their advice.  This show is phenomenal!  I just finished season 1, and I honestly think I like this show better than 24.  After 24 ended I didn't know if I would ever find a show as awesome as 24, I'm so glad that Homeland measures up.  So if you liked 24, you will love Homeland.  Now I'm so pumped to watch season 2!

2012 run and strength workout totals:
This is the first year that I actually kept good track of all my workouts on a calendar.  I mainly did it to try to monitor my injury status and see if increased mileage or decreased strength training or some other factor influenced how my body felt injury wise.  I also did it to monitor the mileage on my running shoes.  Not surprisingly, my mileage is sort of a bell curve, increasing to a peak of 103 miles, and then gradually falling again as the weather got worse.  The numbers are super low until May because of my stress fracture injury, and also because I was busy with tax season.  I did notice that around the time when I started to get some left knee discomfort is when my running mileage went up and strength training went down (Aug to Oct).  I still hear some clicking in my left knee while running, I hope that by strength training consistently the clicking might go away.  I've been going to more yoga sessions recently, hopefully this helps over time.

This year I am going to try to keep the numbers more even, especially since I want to do some races in spring (408k on March 10 and Bay to Breakers on May 19).  My hope would be to keep the weekly running mileage around 25 or so, if my body is up for it over the summer.

• January - 14 runs, 25 miles, 10 strength workouts
• February - 11 runs, 27 miles, 5 strength workouts
• March - 2 runs, 9 miles, 2 strength workouts
• April - 1 runs, 3 miles, 2 strength workouts
• May - 7 runs, 27 miles, 4 strength workouts
• June - 14 runs, 52 miles, 3 strength workouts
• July - 12 runs, 62 miles, 8 strength workouts
• August - 13 runs, 63 miles, 2 strength workouts
• September - 13 runs, 103 miles, 3 strength workouts
• October - 10 runs, 57 miles, 3 strength workouts
• November - 9 runs, 46 miles, 6 strength workouts
• December - 5 runs, 29 miles, 12 strength workouts

Totals - 111 runs, 503 miles, 60 strength workouts

What is your Super Bowl prediction?  
Do you watch Homeland?