Take it on the run, and Freddie Forever (For now)

Another year, another team title at the Atlantic track and field championships.
That’s makes it five straight years for Pictou County Athletics (PCA) who had individuals bringing home their fair share of medals from last weekend’s event. It was the usual.
It’s not just about the hardware, the achievements.
The PCA will hold a free open house July 23 (6:30 p.m. at the Stellarton track) and if you want, you and/or your kid to get in shape, it might be a good idea to head on over to the track and field complex and see what you might get out of it.
Studies have shown that Nova Scotia has a higher-than-average obesity rate, when compared to the rest of the country. And the numbers have been increasing – not only are we fat, we’re getting fatter.
Let us raise our glasses of pop and our boxes of donuts, and make a toast to that.
During a recent training session, a group of PCA runners took turns running 400-metre sprints – 10 trips around the track in total for each one of them. Mind you, they’ve been doing this for a while: you just can’t blow in off the street, dragging that spare tire around like a giant fanny pack, and start running 4,000 metres over the course of an evening. 
You have to build slowly and carefully, taking the time to get it right (you know, like Alexander Keith did with his beer, only he still hasn’t gotten it right. But that’s another story).
Those 400-metre sprints took some wind out of the runners, but then they got home after training, they probably felt a lot better than they would have if they’d sat around, doing little or nothing all day.
Another Random Sports Thought:
• Freddie Freeman is one of those major league ballplayers that almost nobody’s familiar with (editor’s note: he’s been to four all-star games and is career .293 hitter. Pretty solid stuff).
There I was at D-Man’s house, watching a Sunday afternoon baseball game, and for gambling purposes, both of us needed the Atlanta Braves to get a bunch of runs on the board. 
It was the eighth inning in a tie ball game and up comes Freeman to the plate, with two runners on base. 
D-Man was worried: we’d already talked about Freddie Freeman and his ineptness throughout the Braves’ weekend series with the Padres, who by the way, play in a beautiful ballpark in downtown San Diego. 
“Oh, he’s got this,” I said as Freddie stepped into the batter’s box, confident in him for some reason. Ebullient, really.
“He’s 0-for-13 in this series, he sucks (editor’s note: that’s not true), so he’s the perfect guy to hit a three-run homer right now.”
First pitch comes in a couple seconds later, and BAM!! A three-run homer over the right field fence, a no-doubter – the Padres outfielders moved a couple of steps and watched the ball sail deep into the bleachers. 
As an Al Pacino character once said, “it’s fun to be right.”
(editor’s note: mostly because it doesn’t happen very often).
Unfortunately, other games around the sports world didn’t go the way we planned, so we got no financial windfall out of this particular Sunday afternoon, but Freddie Freeman is now a legend in my book, at least for a week or so, which is better to have than 30 or so dollars (editor’s note: not really).
 
Kevin Adshade is a writer with The News. His column appears each week.