Sports, sports, sports!

It will come as no surprise that I'm back to write about my sports.

First, I had the opportunity to return to good old Team Schaefer in DC for this year's winter league tournament. Besides being pleased to see so many friendly faces, I was also pleased to finish a season after I cut short last year's with a move. Team Schaefer wouldn't be able to capture last year's winning ways, but I was thrilled to play alongside teammates of yore like Matt, Ryan, Ali, Scrap and Sam and to meet and battle with new teammates. We ended up 1-3 on the day. I snagged a few D's, won a few battles, and enjoyed scraping up my body with a variety of failed layouts. One of my favorite moments came on a line with Matt, Scrap, and Sam. Sam got the D, the disc moved quickly and Scrap put up a nice throw that I could track down in the end zone. My favorite personal play (other than perhaps winning a battle of the beards in the air) was a strange one. I dove for a disc as my opponent went to catch it. He was successful, but I got my whole hand on the disc. Rather than let go, I tugged on it to keep my balance and he ended up swinging me around into position to put on a mark. I don't think it was as intentional on my part as it sounds, but it worked out well and I was happy I hadn't let go until my balance was regained.

I miss those games on the mall, the polo fields, and glug, glug, glugging with Team Schaefer.

I returned to games under the lights for winter league playoffs mile high style, still battered a bit from the weekend. In a wild scheduling twist, what had once been a game I was to miss became one I could make although without the rest I would have liked. I arrived and dragged myself through a warm-up. I declined to start, hoping instead that I could be ready off the bench. Unfortunately, the team seemed to be in the same mode. We played very little defense in the first half and fell behind. We switched to a zone and I had some good success in the cup, but then our offense faltered, particularly in the red zone. The game was over and so was our season. It was not the way I thought we'd go out.

To continue the trend of underperforming, I ran a 3 mile race yesterday. I can tell you about the skiing the day before or the fact that it was once again about 10 degrees with snow and ice on the ground, but I think the real story is that I'm out of shape. Running once a week and playing Ultimate once a week and then doing a little (stress on little) are not keeping me in good shape. This series of races I'm in is handicapped, so based on the performance at the 10k, I had a rather favorable start time. I knew I could run away from my group and that I had lots of people to pass, but I could tell that the miles were not flying by. I battled throughout, and in the last 400 meters had passed all, but one young man, probably 12 or 13. I pulled up behind him with about 200 meters to go and to his credit he kicked it in. I was kicking too and I had two thoughts, 1. It seems kind of mean to beat a kid, 2. Maybe he's not going to break.

I put aside the first and pushed on. Fairly quickly, the kid's kick wore out and I cruised into the finish line in what turned out to be (readers of this blog from way back when will know) second place overall. I actually finished 14th by time, a survival of a 20:14, 6:45 per mile pace. I don't really understand what this does to my season points or the trophy series, but I've got a 4 miler in April where I can start to figure that out. These slow times may actually help me in this series if I can find a way to build up my base and start running like I mean it again.

Until we sports again...