It's been a big week for sports. I went to a tournament in Breckenridge last weekend. I was invited up Friday morning. The team was thrown together, but the setting was perfect. I had several of those "I can't believe I live here" moments as I was looking at the mountains and preparing for my first non-beach Ultimate tournament in ages.
The team, named GRUDGE, came together well. We clicked, we pulled in pick-up after pick-up, sometimes from the very team that would play us next. The pick-ups seemed to get better as the weekend went on. We went 2-2 on Saturday. I had 5 turns and a few nice highlights including a grab on a hammer that had seemingly sailed over my head. Somehow I hung in the air and it stuck to my hand. Sunday, we made quick work of the first team, although my layout resulted in some ringing ears and then we made pretty quick work to avenge a loss from Saturday. We took our semi-final game to 9-9 before succumbing 13-10. I got to land our last punch, though, with a down wind high release backhand break. I'm skipping over a few moments, including a not-so-pretty argument where I was unintentionally in a guy's face regarding a strip call and a whole lot of anger over bad score-keeping. I'm skipping over some good moments too including a hot tub and no turns on Sunday that I can recall. I'm amazed and thrilled that I made it through 7 games. I've definitely hurt worse.
I farmed on Monday and played in a disappointing league game that we lost by a point. My feet and boy were starting to complain, but I managed a slow bike ride and a light run to get ready for the 5k still ahead.
Good times.
Nursing some soreness, I entered a 5k on the fourth of July. It was poorly run, but I was able to knock it out with a performance that looked a lot like my last 5k. The plan was to follow one of my brother-in-law's high school stars, but in the first 400 meters I realized that her pace wasn't quite what I had in mind. I heard cheers for her all the way though, so my pace wasn't a whole lot quicker. There wasn't a lot of intrigue in the race. I'd expected 18:30 and I ran 18:26. I was fighting hard to beat the lead dog at mile one (5:52), but never saw him again after he and his owner stopped for water. I crossed the 2-mile alone at 11:46, passed one more guy with about 800 meters to go, struggled to manufacture any sort of kick and finished 8th, well back of 7th and about 10 seconds ahead of 9th.
It was nice to be back on the fields and on the run. I need to grab a little more of that glory this summer.
No comments:
Post a Comment