ultimate

I often wonder if a 1.5 hour workout once a week can really help much, but it's better than sitting on my ass every Tuesday night.

I guess.

Last week after the plyometrics, we ran 3 800m relays: in groups of 3, each person ran 800m, then rested as the other two runners on his team ran an 800m, too. I ran with Heather, as there were 4 women at the track, and Heather likes to run with a partner. I told her I would be running at an 8:00/mile pace, if that was okay. It was, and we were actually able to run the 800s in 3:57, 3:56 and 3:47.

This week, however, we ran a 400, an 800, then a 400. We ran a reduced run because we had a tournament last weekend, and another tournament this weekend. Fair enough.

My plan was to run a 2:00, 4:00 and a 1:50, keeping with my 8:00/mile times. Brynne, Heidi and I all ran at the same time, because we were partnered with Kris and Chris in the relay. Heidi wanted to run fast, fast, fast, so I slowed her down on the first 100 of the first 400.

The back stretch of the track had a nice back wind on it, so running fast in the first 200 yards was very easy. The front stretch, on the other hand, was a bear! That head wind was almost enough to stop a runner. Ugh.

I ran my first 400 in 1:47. Faster than I expected, but good none-the-less. I was a second behind Heidi and 2 seconds behind Brynne, who kicked in the last 40 yards to pass me at the end. I minded little because we had two more runs to run.

I ran the 800 in 3:46. Faster than my expected 4:00, and pretty good with that darned head wind. And not bad after all the plyometrics we did. I was feeling pretty good at the start of the run, and ran faster than a jog, but pretty much my natural running pace, with a kick at the end. Heidi came in at 3:57, Brynne at 4:21.

My last 400 I didn't even bother to run with Heidi and Brynne. I just relaxed into my pace, making sure I kept my arms swinging forward and backward (and not side to side as they used to do when I used to get tired), and my knees up. Before I started, I was trying to decide if I wanted to run it in 90 seconds or 100, and settled on 100. I ran a 1:37.

It's very hard to run a 1:37 400m and realize I used to run them 33 seconds faster (my best time of 64 seconds in college). But I couldn't play ultimate, and couldn't catch a disc then, so it all balances out.

Received an email from a teammate tonight. It referenced tryouts for Mischief, the coed team I play for.

I just got off the phone with P.  Apparently beer run has been
bad mouthing both us and monkey (and probably other teams) to 
try and get our tryouts.  At any rate, I'm told it is working,
they just hooked J (she said no to monkey at their last tryout).

P told me that he'd like to see us rather than beer run get a
couple folks monkey cut.  As such we've got a few more folks we
should consider...

Quick seque... Or not so quick. I often think these entries are like a Simpsons episode, where the first 5 minutes are compellingly strange and designed to set up some completely improbable scenario that leads to the rest of the episode.

On to the part where Lisa says something clever...

When I was living with Kelly Johnson, she would often provide insights into people's behaviour (being a psychology major, such insights were probably second nature). One of the behaviours she pointed out was the act of criticizing others in order to make oneself appear better.

It's quite easy to do, as it's easier to cut the other person/team/group down than it is to build up oneself.

Once Kelly pointed it out to me, I tried to eliminate when I made myself appear better by making the other person look worse. Sure, honest self assessment is always hard, and bad-mouthing someone else isn't really bad-mouthing if what you're saying is true. But as the saying goes, if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all.

Or something like that.

So, when I received the email quoted above, I was a little annoyed. Okay, a lot annoyed. Probably more so because I sometimes feel I have no options to play with another team because I'm expected to play with Kris, and his options are limited. So I'm on this team, even though I want to try to get on another team.

When I voice this desire to Kris, he'll ask me if I want to get to Nationals because I earned it, or because I rode the coattails of others on the way. What joy is there in winning if you spent the entire tournament on the sidelines? I can help build a team, contribute to the success of the team, or I can let someone else run the show.

And then there's age. Or at least the perception of age. I'm not convinced I'm heading down in my athletic ability. But I'm also not convinced I'm as fast as I was, say, at 25 when I started playing. I train much smarter now. And more deliberately. My mental game, lord, my mental game is definitely better.

But why you got to be dissin' us, BR?

It bothers me. More than I thought it would.

Climbing back down off the soapbox now.

Getting up to go to the tournament was rough this morning, as we were getting up at 8:00 am! 8! Ugh. Still, we rolled out of the house at 8:30 and arrived at the fields at 9:30, just as the first games were getting started (1/2 an hour late).

My team won our first game (in pre-quarters), so we had a two round bye until the quarter-finals. Great. For someone who would rather be home sleeping, or at least just working in the back yard, this was a little torturous.

But only a little.

True to form, I had a book with me (The Reality Dysfunction, Part 2: Expansion), and read during the byes. I sat at the sideline of Kris' games (we managed to play only one of six rounds at the same time), so that I could watch him play. When he was on the field, I would watch. When he was on the sidelines, I would read. Worked out well.

At the end of the day, Kris asked me if I noticed when he was playing in the sunshine.

Huh?

He went on to explain that, at one point when he was on the sideline next to me, he positioned himself so that he was casting a shadow over the book as I was reading. He then shifted back and forth to cause the shadow to flicker on the book as I read. Had I noticed?

I had not.

Not only had I not noticed his doing this at the time, I also disbelieved him when he told me he had done so.

So I told him about the first time I knew of when I didn't notice the world while I was reading. I was 11.

No surprise to anyone, I've been a bookworm my whole life. As near I as I can tell, I've always loved reading. So, when the family was all gathered in the family room (oh, to have a house big enough to have a separate living room and family room!), I would sometimes read when everyone else was watching TV (I still do this: "TV is a waste of time, but reading is productive!").

It was one of these evenings that, while I was reading (a Nancy Drew book, actually, probably borrowed from my friend Jenny), everyone in my family jumped up and ran out of the room.

I noticed the movement, and puzzled, stood up to follow them out of the house. Everyone was in the kitchen, which looked out over the front yard (which, as this image shows, is about 3/4 of an acre deep).

There used to be a huge tree at the very front of the yard, about 10 feet from the road. The tree trunk was about 3 feet in diameter, so it was a good sized tree. About once a year, someone would come around the curve too fast, stare at the tree as they came around the bend in the road, fixate on that tree, see nothing but that tree, and plow right into it.

This particular night, it was several young men (I don't recall the age, but I don't believe they were underage) who met the tree. They had been drinking (an open six-pack in the backseat), and driving. The driver came around the bend too fast and wrapped his car around the tree.

Turns out, the whole family heard the screech of tires and the loud crash of the car.

Except me.

I never heard the sounds. Our neighbors many many houses over came out to see what was going on. Some were over a quarter mile away and still heard the crash.

Not me.

My dad commented to his dad sometime after that how he wished he had the ability to block out the world when he read. He didn't understand how I did it. He was glad I had the ability to become absorbed in books, as it meant I could concentrate well. But he didn't understand the gift.

I related the story to Kris after he told me he had shifted his shadow while I was reading.

I never noticed.