Skylands

Another "fake" game, lost 16-17. Red split up, three players to my team and four to Team Orange. Few of my guys (and none of my girls) came to play, so it was another uncoordinated game. The offense had little flow. I threw some shit hucks, I got handblocked on an attempted break throw, but I also got a bunch of D's, threw some completed hucks, and caught a few skies. It seems like all summer league games are like that, but at least I get to run around and play with some Machine teammates. I can't wait for the club series to start.

Run

2.2mi in 15:42 (8:00 out, 7:42 back, 1.1mi each)
4x12 pushups

Worthless Post

90 minutes of yoga.

Joga

Run 2mi in 14:55
60min yoga class
Run 2mi in 13:40

Best 2mi time yet. My legs felt like water on the way to yoga, and like rubber on the way back. That flow yoga class is actually fairly difficult. I've only taken it twice, but both times I had had something difficult the day before that made me tired and sore. I enjoy the stretch and the challenge, though, and I think it is beneficial in at least a couple ways. For one, I generally can't stretch to reach my toes after a tournament or hard couple days of Ultimate. The yoga really pulls me out a little, not so I feel loose but so I feel limber. It's nice. Plus, we work on balance, control of the body's movements, and overall strengthening of the quads, gluteals, abdominals, and shoulders. The hamstrings got a much needed stretch today, because they have been bothering me for the past week (since I did those deadlifts last Monday, then kept working them in games).

I'm fairly content with what I've been doing to keep in shape over the past week. I skipped a track workout yesterday, but I had the tournament on Saturday, srimmage on Sunday, and a game yesterday that was harder than it should have been. Time to go do some light back/bicep/abs.

5 pull-ups, rest, 3 pull-ups
3 sets of 8 bicep curls @15lbs
32 alternating crunches, legs on chair
16 crunches, legs on chair

Skylands

vs Blue.

Game started out fine, I was fairly confident about beating this team. They have two old handlers and a couple fast guys of medium height. They also picked up Dave's sister, who practiced with Mischief last year, and she was pretty sick. But our team has, in my opinion, more talent colelctively...so I was only moderately surprised to find ourselves up 8-6 at half. Pei was giving us a lot of trouble by poaching in the lanes, nowhere near her matchup. I think the problem was, if we were a real team we would recognize it and adjust by cleaning up our offense so that a poach would be more obvious and the deep space would be open for the poached player. Instead, we just hit the dump/swing--which was actually working pretty well, but you still need cutters to make things happen. We cut each other off in the backfield, though, and then there were some poor decisions. I got skied early on by some short fast dude after the huck to me floated...and that sucked.

After the half was a little better, at first. We brought it to 11-8, then our offense crumbled. Two different people dropped pulls, somebody dropped the disc in the endzone, and we started to throw the disc away. I put line drive hucks out the back of the endzone, and shitty hucks to covered receivers. I wasn't the only one, though...throwing into poaches, break throws to nobody, a lot of poor decisions. So they brought it to 12-13, we traded for a 13-15 loss.

Blech. I don't want to think about it anymore.

YCC Practice #1

At the tryouts for the NJ YCC team, I pledged my alleigance to the devil. Wait, no, that was this past Friday...ah, I volunteered to be an assistant coach for Dirty Jerz (Garden State). After discussion at length with Jon Lin, one of my mentors from freshman year of Watchung who also acts as assistant coach to CHS (during the season) and, now, YCC, I emailed my thoughts about each of the tryouts to the two head coaches. We had pretty much nailed the picks for the team, and it will be interesting now to see how each of the players steps up to fill different roles on the field. Jon Lin was at the Philly Invite with me on Saturday, but opted to stay and play on Sunday rather than come and coach with me--I understand, the dude has been out of Ultimate for far too long, and wants to play the game. So after not quite enough sleep, I woke up around 8am, had a nice big breakfast (1/3 cup oats, blueberry yogurt, fresh blueberries, crushed walnuts, and 1/2 scoop of unflavored whey protein) and met up with the Watchung kids to head down. We were late, and I was happy to know that I would not be chastised or punished for tardiness--this is called "times I am not so disappointed to not be on the team."

I strolled over to coaches Nunez and Mio and saw that Jackson had also made it out, which was cool. We shot the shit, set up the field, and watched kids warm up in the growing heat. Immediately, the HCs launched into describing the offense that GS will follow for their tournaments, and set up several drills to teach the key concepts. The first drill was a simple cutter-defender, thrower-marker drill: force directional, cutter gets open, thrower gets him the disc, rotate through the positions. I had to cover one of the quickest players on the team, and my thrower was pretty much a dedicated deep, so it was pretty interesting. I got some D's, gave up a couple easy cuts just by not being ready for that kind of speed, and completed almost everything on offense. The next drill brought that into a slightly more gamelike situation, which was the basic progression throughout the practice. Finally we worked on handler motion, and I coached a team of three on some of the finer points of moving the disc. We took the same groups and pitted them against each other for a competitive game: 3v3, completing the dump-swing equals a point, game to 3, score on offense only. It was somewhat ugly, and during this time Jackson and I mostly watched from the sideline and talked about what we thought about the handler motion.

After a longer break, we split into teams for scrimmage. Jackson and I played and often matched up against each other, which was cool. I mostly played as a handler, moved the disc well short and threw the gamut of hucks--one long forehand that slipped and shot out of bounds, one nice forehand that the receiver would have caught were he not fouled, etc. I broke the mark when I wanted to, often to assist goals. My D was decent (got one interception on Jackson), but I got skied in the endzone by a kid with much more ups than I have. I also got skied on O in the endzone--I had inside position to go up with my left hand, but I had wrapped my left hand because it was bothering me. So I went up with my right, almost like a hook shot, and the Stanford-A player knocked it down. Damn. We lost the game 3-5, I threw too many turnovers.

Afterwards, the kids who had been late did 40yd down-and-backs. Again, times I am not so disappointed to not be on the team--it was damn hot. Jackson and I went to Tijuana Burrito with Mio to meet up with Pete and Greg for our officers' meeting for Machine. We talked about scheduling, tryouts, and more, all very generally. Nunez had tagged along and he gave his input as well. I am seriously sore at this point, though.

Philly Invite

Drove down to Pippin's house this morning, met up with NYNJA, now also called Project Mayhem, and received my new jersey. We rode down the rest of the way to the fields, stood around waiting for Won to send word from the captains' meeting about what field we were to play on, and finally walked through the dewy grass and small white mushrooms to the field we would stay on all day (score!). 2min warmup and I'm game ready. We take half 8-3, I assist 6 of those points and score one of the remaining two. I was on fire for this game, if I do say so myself...my throws were tight, hucks connected, moved the disc well. The team as a whole dropped off the intensity in the second half, allowed them to claw back, but we put it away 15-13ish. Second and third game were much of the same, playing a great first half and then slacking off a bit in the second, winning by smaller margins than we ought to have had. The last game was sort of brutal, I started having a bunch of mini-cramps, where one muscle or another would seize up for two seconds and then be fine, so I never took an injury sub but it freaked me out. It's really early in the morning so I'm gonna go to sleep and maybe update this recap tomorrow, after I help out at the YCC practice instead of helping my team win their division.

Personal Stats: (Assists.Goals.Blocks.Throwaways.Drops::Fantasy)
Game 1: 8.3.5.3.2::+11
Game 2: 1.1.1.1.0::+2
Game 3: 2.3.1.1.0::+5
Game 4: 3.0.1.5.0::-1

+17 Fantasy for the day.

Skylands

vs. Black tonight.

Went up 3-1, lost half 7-8, won 15-12. We gave them a squirrely, experienced handler and an awesome female receiver. He did his thing, she basically dominated her matchup--even getting a handblock on one of our supposedly better players, which was actually pretty funny. I put up some nice forehand hucks that led my receivers beautifully, and I put up a mixed bag of nice backhand hucks and awful backhand hucks--only semi-catchable because they were thrown to my ridiculously-fast roommate. I moved the disc well in the short game, got open whenever I wanted, skied Sachin Desai, but only played acceptable defense. I poached off the dump a little, let one break off...I got at least one block, though. Like I said, acceptable. I played too much, but that was because I really wanted to play. I'd take more subs if I played more often.

Bench press:
15 reps 70lbs, 10 reps 90lbs, 2 reps 90lbs, 10 reps 70lbs, 8 reps 70lbs.

Yoga

Drove to yoga, did a 60 minute flow class. It burned like a motherfucker, because I was very sore from Monday's workout.

Yoga

Got driven to yoga tonight. Skipped my last few workouts, because I'm working and this whole workout-alone thing is difficult. Not just yoga tonight, though, we also did some basic weight exercizes.

3x
(15 incline dumbbell press at 20lb
24 lunges, 20lb in each hand
24 crunches on the ball
16 deadlifts, 40lb)

Ran home in less than 16 minutes. Not timed this time, the iPod was dead. I tried to borrow a concept from Dusty and "win the workout", and I felt pretty good about the run. I tried not to be concerned with the fact that I wouldn't have a legitimate time to record, but it was a little frustrating. The good news is, I registered for unlimited yoga classes for the rest of the summer, and found a running partner for post-yoga runs.

Tonight I watched the Federer-Nadal match. Fed seemed very inconsistent throughout the first few sets, but he really turned it on for the last one. I was pretty amazed at the clutch play of his final set. It's worthwhile to note the correlation to the 2006 and 2007 College Championship games. In '06, what really stood out for me was how many times Wisco overthrew their receivers on hucks--it's a fairly obvious observation, forgive me. In '07, though, they had 4 or 5 turnovers in the whole game. They really tightened up their throws, displayed top-to-bottom fundamentals, and played clutch all day long. In physical matchups against some of the top players in the country (Dahl and Kittredge, most notably), they consistently outplayed the other man. They seemed to beat Beau by forcing him under and then playing incredible D when he did go deep. To me, to sky the arguably most athletic player in the college game is by definition to play clutch. At their other opportunities, they brought the big, stinky cheese. Great grabs, smothering defense--they did the damn thing, and I don't think they even peaked in the traditional sense of the term. What's the point? Champs bring it when it counts.

Pickup

I missed Monday's summer league game because I got stuck at work in Jersey City. Tuesday was pickup, though, so I went thinking it could be fun. To my surprise and delight, it was pretty enjoyable. When my team was pulling, I tried to match up against either one of the seasoned handlers of the league or the tall kid from Amherst College, but I often ended up guarding a quick cutter with no throws, an old handler with no legs, or somebody from the middle of the pack. I got to D a bad huck in the endzone, sky several people (including tall Amherst), get some blocks, throw and catch some goals. One of my hucks was too low and got picked off by my mark, who was 10' away. I threw some nice hucks, though, and my short forehands felt great.

I was trying to avoid injury during the game...I started to wonder whether most injuries in Ultimate come from competitive games or pickup situations, because there were a lot of hospital passes--times when the thrower would lead his guy into a poach or put up the disc in traffic. I almost collided head-on with a guy who was cutting up into the endzone, but I slowed up and gave up the D to save my face (not to save face, but to save MY face). I got put up in traffic once, but thankfully I came down with it with no more than some arm contact. The real problem, though, was when a female friend of mine from NYNJA was trailing her defender back into the front of the stack. I was trailing my guy, baiting the throw to the open-side in cut. The throw went up, and the girl followed it for the opportunistic D. I saw her and hesitated, but then she slowed down (presumably for the same reason I did), so I took another couple steps and then jumped and D'ed the disc right before it came to my man's hand. Of course, when I went up, she was still running toward us. My hip met her face and took her out. She was on her back, we gave her air, she got a nosebleed. I felt bad, she said it was her fault (for trying to run head-on into an in-cut contest), somebody gave her a towel. Later, she came back into the game and somebody hucked it to her when two tall dudes were covering her (one was her man, the other a poach).

These sort of things still happen in high-level Ultimate, but not as frequently. There is usually less poaching, more vision from the thrower, and single-gender play. I mean, with my momentum I definitely would have taken out even most dudes, but for some reason I think I would not have felt as bad, especially if he were an experienced player who should know better. But that's pickup for you.

Track 1

I skipped my first three planned track workouts of the summer. Basically, I was either busy or lazy, and never had a running partner to go with me--the guys who said they would do it weren't around. But Brian got back today, and he called out Bryan, and we headed to the track for a workout.

1 lap warmup, brief stretch/dynamics
1mi in 6:02 (1:28, 1:29, 1:30, 1:25)
200m in 27.7, 200m in 29.7

The first 200m is lowballed, because I was using an iPod to time and clicked the button one step before I crossed the line. Close enough, though. During the second, I felt drained--I could tell my muscles were growing sore as I ran, and it slowed me down. After I crossed the line, my vision started to white out, which hasn't happened in a long time...it worried me, so I didn't do the rest of my 200s. The first time it happened was fall of freshman year during one of the team's practices. We were doing short sprint repeats, and after a while my head started to swim. After finishing a set, I looked over to the other end of the field where the girls' field hockey team was practicing; they were all wearing bright yellow uniforms, and gradually the bright yellow radiated off the girls into the air around them. My entire field of vision became a sunburst, I couldn't see anything and I felt woozy. Totally new experience for me, at the time, so the captain had me sit out and drink water. This time, I did the same thing...we were all pretty tapped out, so we walked for a bit and then threw.

We practiced hucks...my shortest were 45yds, longest forehand was 65 and I hit 75 with a couple backhands. The wind was moderate, enough to force me to hold good form if I wanted any decent looking throw. I was pretty happy with my backhands, although the wind stole some of my consistency. I felt awkward with my forehands, and after a while my elbow and shoulder started to hurt. Seems I was trying to force it, so I have to remember to not do that. Afterwards, we call came back to my house for a protein smoothie. Love that stuff. I should probably get back to the track tomorrow, to get back on track with my workouts.