first post!

This post could probably be broken up into a couple of different posts, but I'm a little new to this blog stuff, so I'm just going to throw a whole bunch of unrelated stuff in together because I'm in no mood to be organized.

Since this is supposed to be mainly a running blog, lemme start out with the latest from my running adventures. Thursday we met at Austin High to do 800m repeats. The workout was actually called Yasso 800s, but after reading this article, I'm refusing to use that name. All this time I thought there was some sort of legitimacy or science behind the whole Yasso-thing, but it turns out it's some totally invented theory perpetuated by an article that comes across as last-minute deadline filler. (Trust me, I've run 10x800m repeats before at 3:00 minutes per, and there is no way I'd ever be able to sniff completing a marathon in 3 hours.)

Anyway, on to the actual running. I was late so I had drive straight to the track. Drills were starting as I entered the gate, which meant there was pretty much no warm up for me. So when Gilbert told us to run the first one at 3:10, I was a little relieved. After the first one, the faster people picked it up, but I stayed at about a 3:05 pace with Paul, dv (did I mention dv was there? Welcome back!) and Tony. dv and Tony were done after 6, and I hung with Paul who claimed he was doing 10 only to bail on me after 8. So now I was in the annoying spot of having to run the last 2 on my own. This is always kind of weird spot --- on one hand you think, "hell yeah, I outlasted the rest of my group." but that high last all of about 2 seconds when you realize you need to finish on your own. Then you start begging people to help out for 400m or something, but really... no one's interested. (Just for the record, if I'm making it sound like this is a common situation for me, it's not. I think it's happened twice in my almost 2 years of running with the gazelles.) So I sucked it up, stayed at 3:05 for number 9, and pushed myself to do the last one in 2:50. Despite having done this workout faster before, I can't complain. I'm never unhappy when I can talk myself into continuing to run when I really want to quit. (By the way, good episode of Lost after the workout.)

This has nothing to do with running, but on Friday I found out that Polaroid is getting out of the instant photography business. The horror! That certainly put a damper on my afternoon. This doesn't bode well for my hopes of doing a lifelong polaroid photodocumentary. I'm going to keep my fingers crossed that someone will still manufacture the film (and since I'm being foolishly optimistic, let's hope that it's cheaper too).

Saturday would usually mean 10 miles, but instead I spent the day not getting anything done on the deck I'm allegedly building. I'm blaming my lack of productiveness on the fact that I was saving myself for ultimate on Sunday which is, incidentally, another reason that I skipped running. (If you don't know what ultimate is, look here.)

Ah, today was the tournament for the Austin ultimate winter league. (This is also not about running, but the sport does involve a ton of running.) We had a great team this season. Everyone was fun to play with and while we did have a couple of super stars, really what made our team competitive was the fact that we had such a consistent roster. Everyone played really solidly. I wasn't sure what to expect today since there was a lot of parity in the league. Our team was 8-4 --- good enough for the second best record in the league, but we won most of those games by just 1 or 2 points. (I'd like to also point out that despite missing half of the games, I was present for 3 out of our 4 losses. What does that say about my role on the team?)

The team got off to an awesome start in the first game jumping out to 4-0 right away (games were to 13), then trading points, and winning 13-7. That was by far our biggest margin of the season and got us into the semis. Remember that parity thing I was mentioning? It turned out that we were the only team in the top 4 to make to semis.

Unfortunately, our reward was to play the gray team, who beat us in the last week of the season, albeit with our best players not playing. Though they were stacked talent-wise, they only had one female player for the tournament and most of the other players were feeling the effects of having to play two games before playing us because they were a lower seed. (Don't ask me how that team didn't have a better record.) Once again we got off to a fast start, 3-0, then 4-1, but I think we only took a 7-6 lead into half time. We pulled away again to start the second half, but they tied things up at 10-10. We were obviously tightening up, but we managed to suck it up and pull away for a 13-11 victory. I have to admire how hard the gray team fought, 4 people left the field at various times due to cramping, and they all came back and played by the end of the game.

So we made finals! This is very exciting for me, since I've never been in the finals of a league tournament. However, at this point I was dragging a little. It was 80-freaking-degrees, the sun was out, and despite the fact that I thought I had been nourishing myself adequately, I was feeling a little lightheaded. I didn't play much at the start of the final game against the light blue team, but when I finally made it in, I had apparently eaten enough that I didn't feel any ill effects the rest of the game. The first half went by really fast, and we were up 8-5 (for the finals, the game went to 15). I played a lot more in the second half, and didn't hurt our team too much. We won the game on a beautiful forehand huck from our captain Tank to Monty for 15-11 victory. And that was it. Now I know what it feels like to win a league tournament. As a reward, we got t-shirts that will allow us to forever gloat about our 2008 winter league superiority.

I'm always glad when I finish any athletic endeavor without any serious injuries, and I thought about that when I got home. But I have to mention that after sitting at the kitchen table for an hour, I got the most ridiculous hamstring cramp when I stood up. This has never happened to me before, and the pain kinda surprised me. Hopefully, the knot won't still be lingering for our Tuesday workout, as my legs will be generally sore as it is from all of today's sprinting around.