Crooked number

In baseball the players often talk about the necessity of "putting up a crooked number". This refers to scoring more than 1 run in an inning, a 1 being straight and the other numbers being "crooked".

Today I put up my first mileage total where the first digit is a crooked number. It was also a crooked effort, very hard work for this time of the season. I had to push hard for that many miles but it was worth it. I feel good.

At this point I have a very good understanding of how hard it is to ride 20 miles. I know that it is going to be hard without having to make any reference to my relative level of fitness. I knew it was going to be hard today but it is also true that every increase in mileage is hard.

Yesterday we had enough new snow to bring the snowplows out. It was near normal temperatures yesterday after the snow stopped and another sunny day today with near normal temperatures rendered the streets pretty much dry. But we have plenty of snow still. Here is my spring bike parked at the mailbox.The new snow is still fairly evident, much whiter than the winter's residue snow which is mostly starting to look pretty dirty. But we still have plenty of both.

And here is some Nantes news that does involve football. The lowest ranking team remaining in le Coupe de France is 5th level league side Carquefou. Carquefou is a suburb of Nantes and for today's Cup fixture they drew as the home team against one of the giants of Ligue 1 and last year's Coupe de France finalist, Olympique de Marseille. Carquefou requested and received permission to hold the home game at the stadium of the local professional team, FC Nantes. According to the game report more than 30,000 attended the game at Stade de la Beaujoire and saw the amateur side score early and then hold on to oust Marseilles 1-0 in what is being called one of the biggest upsets in the history of the competition.

With only 8 teams remaining in the competition, 4 are from Ligue 1, 3 are from Ligue 2 and Carquefou remains representing Championnat de France Amateurs 2. A minnow is swimming with the sharks.

The final of le Coupe de la Ligue is set for Stade de France on March 29 to be contested by Ligue 1 sides RC Lens and Paris-Saint Germain.