I’m at the stage where my knees really prefer walking to running, so maybe it’s no surprise that a big part of me leans towards favoring the marathon over the sprint. I can keep up better while enduring that by relying on sheer speed.

Even when I was more into running, I was never very fast, so the longer distances were more my thing. I would be stretching it to say that an actual 26.2 miles has any intrigue for me at all. I just can’t keep up at 100 meters.

Every year at this time, as I watch the beginning of March Madness, I struggle with the marathon vs. sprint question. Particularly in smaller conference from which just one team gets a chance to play in the NCAA Tournament, it’s hard for me to square the concept that one team who went through the season as the top team in the league can lose its spot in the “Big Dance” because it stumbles against the No. 4 seed in the conference tournament semifinals.

A badly-timed injury, or an off day that comes at the wrong moment and the results of the entire season are wiped out, and the No. 3 seed is the “conference champion.”

I’m not sure I advocate for changing the system, I just feel bad for the teams who were the best over the long haul missing that, “One shining moment,” because someone else got hot in the final sprint.

I know many others who prefer it that way, and that’s okay too.

Burning daylight

As I was watching the NCAA conference tournaments play out Saturday, I was faced with another situation about which I have much uncertainty. I can’t decide if I like the whole concept of changing our clocks twice a year or not.

I guess I’m really a prisoner of the moment, and in this moment my focus was on the lost hour of sleep Saturday night. I’m not sure why it’s so hard for me to just go to bed one hour earlier, knowing the change is coming, but somehow it never seems to happen.

For now, I’ll just try to enjoy the morning darkness and look forward to the lingering daylight at night.

Is the glass half full or half empty? We each see things our own way, and that’s part of what makes life interesting.