What do aggravated IT bands, sore quads, shin splints and black toenails all have in common? I’ve had all of them thanks to my love for running.

I often wonder why I put myself through such torture during my endless training periods before a race and am always reminded of the answer when I finish: I run because I am in control and no one else is dependent on me for a “win.”

I have logged over 800 miles this past year and only 130 of those miles are race miles. I’ve been running for about two-and-a-half years and when I signed up for my first race, the Marine Corps Historic Half marathon, I had no clue that I would love it so much. As a matter of fact, it was supposed to be my only race that year. But I felt such a sense of accomplishment so shortly after the race that I registered for a 5K and another half-marathon that year.

Working as a family law attorney, I am often faced with addressing my clients’ emotional issues as well as their legal issues. While at the office, I have to multitask and can’t focus on one case at a time. I’m also unable to leave my clients’ issues at the office, and I think it’s safe to say I am not the only attorney. I think I would be doing my clients a disservice if I considered my job as an 8-to-5. Don’t get me wrong, I love what I do, but sometimes it can be mentally exhausting and I need a chance to decompress.

That’s where running comes in. I enjoy it because I have a chance to drift into my own world with my thoughts. There are no distractions of phone calls, text messages, emails or television. I have time to process things and my thoughts seem to become clearer. My mind is consistently spinning and it’s hard to shut it off.

During a run, I have an opportunity to step back, isolate my thoughts and contemplate all sorts of stuff. I’ve come up with some great case strategies, such as how to proceed procedurally or how to present my case at trial. I’ve also made personal decisions, such as where to go for vacation or how to make Mother’s Day special for my mom and sisters.

The only distractions during a run tend to be the occasional biker that says “on your left” or the runner that laps me. (I don’t consider myself competitive but I hate to get lapped.) Running has become my outlet; I know that for at least one hour, four-to-five times a week, I will have some Mahasin time. I’m in the driver’s seat and someone else doesn’t dictate my time. I can go at my own pace wherever I want and think about whatever I want. If I start off a run frustrated or overwhelmed, absent an injury, I usually always finish feeling accomplished a rejuvenated.

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Did you get your NCAA tournament brackets in on time?  Thanks to a timely reminder from a colleague, I got mine in with 11 minutes to spare.

I doubt that anyone would argue that March Madness directly impacts workplace productivity. Actually, of all of the major sporting events, March Madness seems to have the most significant, negative impact on workplace productivity, followed by fantasy football and the Super Bowl. In fact, 86 percent of U.S. workers expect to devote at least some time at work this week to follow the games. Forty-five percent of Americans are likely to enter at least one college basketball pool between March 11 and March 18.

According to the Baltimore Business Journal’s non-scientific poll 69 percent of voters (220 as of Friday morning) thought that March Madness activities in the workplace were nothing more than harmless fun. Of course, the fun is no longer harmless when your office network grinds to a halt because of unusually high number of employees covertly streaming the games on their computers.

At least one social psychologist reads significantly more into March Madness-related activities. Don Forsyth says employers can learn a lot about their employees by observing how their employees fill out their brackets

“You could tell how each person made decisions, how they exhibited bias, whether their choices were rational or irrational, if they used mathematical analysis or if they based on emotions,”  he says.

Wow.  I hope no one is analyzing my March Madness picks that closely.

While I have yet to find a company that analyzes its employees’ brackets in any kind of detail, I think most firms have decided to embrace March Madness. After all, a large number of employees are going to watch at least some of the games. Having a TV on in the break room should help ease network traffic, at least to some extent.

More importantly, the tournament provides a natural ice breaker and can encourage a sense of community and the building of relationships. And rivalries. (Friendly ones, of course.)

Now, excuse me while I go spend some time plotting my chances of moving up in the rankings — I’m sure I can get out of this 10-way tie for 149th place. (Hey, it’s a big pool!)

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I play in three weekly basketball games at various gyms near my house. The games themselves are very different: three-pointers count for “2″ in one game, “3″ in another and not at all in a third; in one, the start time can be as late as 9:30 p.m. depending on the 8th grade boys’ practice schedule; and after playing in one gym, someone wheels out a cooler and those so inclined share some good-natured ribbing and an adult beverage.

For all the differences in the three games, though, there are also some striking similarities. For starters, lots of attorneys play in all three of these games… which got me thinking about how these games provide context for and comment on the daily practice of law.

Another similarity is that a high skill level is not a prerequisite for playing (thank goodness). Almost invariably, the players considered “best” in all three games are those who are in the best shape and can get up and down the court quickly and consistently. Other, more naturally-talented players who don’t play as often and clearly don’t spend the time on their own to stay fit usually find themselves gasping for breath with their hands on their knees after a just few times down the court while the man they’re supposed to be guarding speeds past for an uncontested layup.

It’s impossible, I think, not to make the connection to practicing law. Just as the most successful players in these pick-up games are those who train the hardest when they’re not playing, the most successful attorneys are those who work the hardest when the bright lights of the courtroom are not shining. It is the countless hours of practice and preparation — often in an office with darkened windows long after colleagues have left — that separates excellent attorneys from average ones. Success in basketball, as in law, is about hard work and preparation.

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After approximately 10 years of teaching, a profession in which being a good colleague means showing up at an occasional department meeting, maybe cracking a few jokes and not offering any substantive comments that force the meeting to last any longer than absolutely necessary, I found myself in the legal world, where colleagueship has a completely different meaning.

All of a sudden, there was work to be done on deadline and I wasn’t the only one who would be doing it. Where I used to mark up students’ papers with abandon and be the final (and only) arbiter of quality and subpar work, I would now actually be working with other people who would mark up my work product (gasp!) and make suggestions for improvements to opinions, briefs and everything else I drafted.

Do I now know what it means to be a good colleague after a couple of years following this somewhat uncomfortable transition into the legal world? To see how much (or how little) I knew, I asked several attorneys I know — one government attorney, one at a large national firm, and one at a small firm — what they believe makes a good colleague.

Surprisingly, all of us (yes, even me) produced similar answers. So, with spring training right around the corner — Orioles pitchers and catchers report Feb. 18 — I have craftily compiled the main measures of attorney colleagueship into measurable statistics based upon familiar baseball stats. These can be used to evaluate all attorneys — new associates, senior counsel and even partners.

1. ERA (Earned Run Average) = meets Expectations, is Reliable and Accountable

In the feedback I got from almost every attorney I asked, these three traits appeared the most. Just like the baseball stat (which, yes, I know, is already a thing of the past) measures a pitcher’s reliability, this colleagueship statistic measures how well you do what you say you are going to do so that others can rely on you.

An implicit part of this aspect of colleagueship is actually understanding what you’re going to be able to accomplish over a specific time period and communicating that effectively to other colleagues. Unlike baseball, a high ERA as a colleague is a good thing. It means your colleagues can count on you, which means they will like to work with you.

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Ah, Super Bowl Sunday. The fierce competition of rival athletes. The camaraderie of dedicated fans. The nail-biting, last minutes of a game where anything could happen. The off-hand comment, “So, who won?”

Yeah. That was my comment. I was working on the computer in the kitchen when my wife came down and said that it was over. It gets worse — she told me the answer, and my attitude was probably best described as indifferent. I am one of five brothers and the only one who has any consistent interest in sports is the oldest. The rest of us just didn’t get that gene. (My dad doesn’t have it, either, though I suppose he’s a carrier.)

I spent more time Sunday reading about football than actually watching it. I came across this article on CNN, “The president who saved football.” It seems whether you like football or hate it, you have Teddy Roosevelt to thank/blame.

Apparently, football was a very violent and unregulated sport back in Teddy’s day. In 1905, before the advent of the NFL and professional football, 18 amateur and college players died because of injuries associated with the game. Fans loved the sport with all of its raw brutality, but it had powerful detractors and was at risk of being banned.

Roosevelt called a beer summit (I can’t say that there was beer there, but one could easily imagine Teddy drinking a brew and bringing folks together) and helped influence changes to the sport that would save it while appeasing the more pacifistic opponents. No more gang tackles, 10 yards needed for a first down and the advent of the forward pass. It’s hard to believe that passing is such a relatively modern addition.

A bunch of grown men in costumes playing war games — it sounds like a Star Trek convention. Actually, how is fantasy football any different than Dungeons and Dragons? Maybe I should like it more than I do…

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This Christmas day, sports fans will welcome the beginning of an abbreviated National Basketball Association season. The season, much like the National Football League season, was saved from a lockout and protracted litigation — no thanks to some of the lawyers involved who stereotypically seemed only to get in the way of parties who were otherwise desperate to come to an agreement. In the end, it took a lockout of the lawyers in each dispute to get an agreement done.

Execution of a new NFL collective bargaining agreement depended largely on the owners and players agreeing how to split the league’s $9 billion revenue. Other issues included a proposal to extend the regular season, establishment of a salary cap and the implementation of health and safety measures. The owners claimed they were losing money due to player salaries, while the players believed some owners simply wished to renegotiate their own revenue sharing agreements.

Unfortunately, negotiations on a new agreement broke down, the players union decertified and a group of players took the league to court. Most reports seem to indicate a deal was inevitable and a compromise would be worked out. But those same reports indicated lawyers involved in the negotiations were not helping the situation. NFL Players’ Association executive director DeMaurice Smith at one point had to tell lawyers for his side to “stand down.” Both sides eventually made a point of meeting and negotiating “in secret” and without the lawyers in the room.

Litigation in federal court and an appeal to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals only frustrated negotiations. A deal was finally reached to save the NFL season, but probably no one would agree that the lawyers helped.

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