Run

3mi in 22:30 (2mi in 15:15, the last mile in 7:15)

By the way, Snertz hurts a lot more the next day.

Snertz

Start time: 7:00pm

1 mi "warmup" in 6:30 (1:44, 1:40, 1:36, 1:30)

4x100yd strides at 50%

2x40yd grapevine at 50%

2x40yd marking shuffles at 50%

2x40yd high knees

2x40yd butt kicks

2x40yd high skips

30 pushups

25 full-body crunches, 25 situps, 50 crunches

4x(15 squat jumps to 40yd sprint)

4x(15 tuck jumps to 40yd sprint)

30 pushups

25 full-body crunches, 25 situps, 50 crunches

at this point, I almost puked

2x40yd walking lunges with twist

40yd single leg hop per leg

2x10 double leg forward hop

2x10 double leg side-to-side hop

30 pushups

25 full-body crunches, 25 situps, 50 crunches

10x(5-10-5 suicide), focus on footwork

10x(40yd sprint), variable rest

4x100yd strides at 50%

800m cool-down in 4:30

End time: 8:15pm

Double Practice

Arrived a little late both days, but both days in time to finish the warmup. Good mix of drills and scrimmages, mostly D vs O, I'm working on my game. Strange to think how my priorities in practice have changed. Trying to take matchups that challenge me, but are within a kind of comfort zone--there are often the players I feel motivated to stop. At tournaments I have to find that drive in other ways, but it helps to feel what that feels like at practice. Then I can't be content with telling myself my guy got the disc because somebody else failed to do their job. It's like when I complete all my passes on offense, get open on my cuts but get looked off, and somebody else throws the (dumb) turnover--yes, that's an opportunity to lay blame and resent my team/mates. But digging deeper, there's almost always something I could have done better to prevent that turnover, prevent my guy from getting the disc. Maybe not reasonable expectations to have of myself, but how else am I going to play like I need to play. There are just certain people who you hate to let beat you, and those are the ones I want to cover. Or have covering me after we get the disc.

Sometimes I worry that the personalities of certain teammates will influence the way I interact with this and other teams I play for. I wonder whether I will be like them when I get older. I wonder whether it's intentional, whether they think they're going to make me play better. I wonder whether it does. I've long believed that I'm more of an interior player--that the way I play is not dependent on being demonstrably "fired-up" or visibly angry. I dislike when people shove in huddles, trying to get their teammates "fired-up." When people told me it helps to get angry on defense, I always sort of mistrusted that in the back of my mind. Maybe it's true, but I don't think there are limits to how true it is. I also don't believe there's only one way to be angry, to be over-the-top violent and shaking. Either way, I often feel that those people trying to get on my case, get on my nerves, get under my skin, are wasting their breath. Throwing stones from glass houses. I think their energy is misguided. But then I have to remember that that doesn't matter, because there is an underlying truth to what they say--regardless of the particular circumstances and whether or not their criticism is in that moment justifiable.

Would I prefer a more even mix of breaking-me-down and building-me-up? Yes. Would that make me play better than I do now? Maybe. Does that matter? No. I have to find it.

Well, that didn't go as planned

I intended to do the Crossfit WoD, "Karen," 150 wall-balls. But I don't have a medicine ball, so I tried to make one out of an old kickball. Filled it with sand, taped it up, 19.0lb exactly. So I got through 50 wall-balls (hit a target 10ft high on the wall) before my ball started gratuitously leaking sand. So I count the first 50 for 1/3rd Karen in 2:58.

Then I wandered over to the pullup bar on the playground and tried to hold a hanging knee-tuck position for time. 0:50, 0:35, 0:35 for a total of 2:00. 0:10 and 0:15 in L-seat position.

Practice this weekend, so maybe it isn't terrible for me to take it easy...

Hills

Focus on acceleration:

10x(30yd sprint up 50degree grass hill, walk down)

Focus on top speed:

3x(75yd sprint up 30degree hill, walk down)

Focus on manliness:

6x(100yd sprint up 20degree hill, jog down, no rest)

Focus on stride length:

4x(200yd sprint up 15degree hill, walk down)

Focus on overspeed:

5x(100yd sprint down 15degree hill, walk up)

Focus on finishing:

100yd sprint down 15degree hill to stride 100yd up to 100yd sprint up

Basements

have low ceilings. Tried to do some stuff anyway.

Bench press: 8 at 120, 4 at 140, 1 at 150, 5 at 130lb

Overhead squat: 8 at 80lb

Hang clean to push press: 8 at 90lb

Deadlift: 8 at 120, 10 at 185lb

Hang clean: 6 at 120lb

Nucci Cup

I was big pappa on Saturday, driving a minivan full of high school kids down to the fields with Lu as my copilot. We got a band of Machiners together with some additions--notably Bo Li, Eli from HP and the 3 'chungers--coming in as the 3rd seed of 6 in the B pool, 8th of 11 overall. Our first game was against Big Floppy Clocks, a team I faced at Philly Invite with a very different kind of pickup team. We went down several breaks in the beginning but somehow climbed out of the hole and pulled off the upset 13-10. Same story in the second game, 13-10 against Bear Proof though it was close the whole time, rather than a comeback victory. Next up was Gender Bias, a fun team of MSU and Ramapo types that we underestimated in the first half, letting them go up by 4 or so before we got our heads on straight and took over, winning 13-9. I was surprised early on against the Peters' team "YFOIFI" (You're fucking out, I'm fucking in) when we went up by several breaks, and I expected them to answer back with a big run of their own because they had some really good players, but maybe because they had low energy we were able to cruise to a 13-7 win. Finally we played Sideshow in our 5th of the day, our 3rd in a row on the worst field of the generally substandard grounds of Quakerbridge Road, and I think we just ran out of gas. Way too many poor-decision hucks and dumb turnovers, we went down by a lot and crawled our way back to an 11-13 loss. 4-1 on the day, setting us up for a quarterfinals game on Sunday against OLD SAG. The game was exciting and intense on both sides as they held the lead for pretty much the whole time, going up by a few early on but keeping us at bay even as we fought back and tied it before the cap went on. There was some silliness with the cap rules, giving us another shot to tie the game when they were up 12-13, but we just couldn't force the turn and they put it away to hand us a 12-14 loss. I was proud, especially because we were playing with only 3 subs for the whole game. It was probably the most fun game of the weekend, too, as our next two were big blowouts that we controlled the entire time, 15-2 against a much depleted Gender Bias and 15-3 against Big Floppy Clocks, who somehow had lost all throwing ability overnight I suppose. We bagged our last game for a 5th place tie, and I think it was a successful weekend overall--we were able to come together well, learning to flow despite being a pickup team and using exclusively ho-stack, an entirely new offense for 75% of our players. I had fun and I saw great potential for Machine coming up this year. I can't wait for school to start again...

Another long run

5mi in 40:02

Recovery

3 rounds of:

(6 x 16" double leg box jumps,

6 per leg 16" single leg box jumps,

6 per leg 16" single leg lateral box jumps,

6 per leg skaters, focusing on balance

12 deep split jumps,

6 calf jumps)

100yds forward crab walk

2x(100yd accelerator, 5 knee-tuck pullups)

100yds backward crab walk

2x(100yd accelerator, 5 knee-tuck pullups)

100yds walk-out pushups

2x100yd accelerator

100yds spider crawl

2x100yd accelerator

100yds walking lunges

2x100yd accelerator

100yds walking lunges

2x100yd accelerator

5x1 door frame L-hang pullups

DoC

Spades: DB sumo deadlift high pulls, 15lb

Hearts: DB push press, 15lb

Clubs: pushups

Diamonds: full body crunches

Total time: 14:40

That's what I did today.

Ugh

Took it easy for a few days to let my hamstring rest, and I hurt my left ankle at work. It's still in pain but much less, so I biked 5mi today and then played some disc golf on the 9-hole course with Caitlin, Ronnie, Matt, and Kim. I was one over par, even after getting handblocked by the wooden post that marks the tee-off area. That felt pretty dumb, especially with the one-stroke penalty it cost me.

A-League Semifinals

I knew it would not be an easy game, but I was feeling surprisingly good about our chances after we traded to 4-4. Even with low numbers, I thought we had the right mix of players to get the job done. Alas, Roots ran off a bunch of breaks in the middle of the game and we couldn't get our heads on straight to stop the bleeding, much less crawl back out of the hole. Roots was also looking particularly calm and collected with the disc, and I think they played a very clean game compared to most times I've played them. For some reason I felt like I was getting open downfield pretty easily, though not always at the right time to get the disc. Either way, that felt good because one of the priorities that made me choose Illuminati over Rutgers was that I wanted to become a more dangerous cutter. Judging by the several hucks I caught with defensive pressure (and another one I dropped in the endzone, d'oh!) I think I've made progress on that front. I had one deep shot that was to an open receiver, but Bode made a great play and got the D so that was a turnover...otherwise, I think I played pretty conservatively, maybe one or two other (completed) deep throws but mostly under and upline cuts. We ended up losing 10-15 or so, and I can't say I'm surprised but I am somewhat disappointed. I think we could have been a much better team this year, but I guess whatever mix we had didn't produce a "winner" mindset team.

Draft League Quarterfinals

I made my worst Draft League appearance ever at maybe the worst possible time. We faced off against the Angus/Bryant/Schank/Kimmelman team that we had beaten while savage, and this time we had Jackson, Frenchy, and Stoddard--in other words, on paper it looked like an easy win. But these guys had a rough time in our last matchup, with multiple drops in the endzone by Bryant, who is almost always money in the bank. In fact, he was tonight--even when the mark forced fast, low, blading hucks, they still connected on almost all of their deep shots. We, on the other hand, did not. I think I had five turnovers, three of which were straight turfed forehands to open cutters (two in the endzone!). Multiple bad hucks by all our throwers, people failing to make plays on offense and defense...I don't think I could overstate how poorly I lived up to my own expectations, but we also failed as a team. The other guys played well, deserved to win that game, and did by a decent margin. Whoops!

New York Invite

After only 3 hours of sleep I stumbled into the back of Jake the Jake's car, complained about the music selection, and promptly passed out for the ride up to Middletown, NY. Though I would later appreciate the shorter drive this tournament came with, compared to the nine hours each way we had last year for Furniture City Shootout, I was really feeling the effects of some less-than-stellar decisions the night before and half of me wanted to sleep through the first few rounds. But I put my big boy pants on, went to the porta-potty to put in my contacts and got into the warmup.

I wasn't sure how much playing time I would get at this tournament. I made the roster but am in a very different place than last year, where I got all my playing time on the O-team after the Boston Invite. This year I've been playing D-line almost exclusively, and haven't yet proven that I deserve significant playing time in big games. Our pool play games were perhaps only big in the sense that we had to take care of business this weekend to get ourselves into bigger games against better opponents for the rest of the season, but I was happy when I got into the first game early on and decided to keep track of what I did on the field. We pretty much rolled over Colt .45, so I got 7 points (3/4) and had one assist in our 15-3 win. The next game against Brooklyn started out close, and I think it was tied at 4 or so before we started running away with it. 6 points in this game (2/4) with two assists and a final score of 15-7.

During the bye round I snagged a pulled pork sandwich and a Dr. Pepper, both of which took some effort to get down but made me feel much better afterwards. Then a nice nap on some carboard under the sunshade and I finally felt great. Re-warmed up after the bye and we got up for the game against Wiretap, a team that beat us at Cazenovia and Boston and we were out for blood. Tight at first, but we went on a big D run in the second half that felt very satisfying, 3 breaks in a row that I was on the field for. During the second point of that run we had them pushed back in their own endzone, all the downfield cutters shut down, tight D on the dump and I took the thrower to stall 9 and then handblocked him to put icing on the cake. 5 points in this game (1/4) and that one D, final score 15-11. Last game against Wilmington I got in a lot more, 6 in the first half and 7 in the second, putting up 2 goals and 2 assists to bring my fantasy for the day up to +8 with no turnovers. I also had another half of a D when I knocked down a blady flick that the mark forced, but I'll also take credit for half a turnover when Fink threw a big bendy backhand huck over my head in the endzone--I half-bid for it, but it was coming in fast and I didn't have much of a shot at it. I did get beat deep for a goal once on the day, late in the Wilmington game but it was a breakside huck after two other break throws, so it was more frustrating as a team defense failure. I got beat in a few times as well, but I think overall I was tight to my man when I was in and didn't let up any really dangerous break throws.

Rounded out the day with a legendary stop at Olive Garden with Frenchy, Bo, CJ and Jake the Jake, putting away bowl after bowl of soup, something like a dozen breadsticks and a ton of water, then watched Will Smith dominate in MiB before falling asleep aroudn 10pm.

Sunday started out very well, I felt good in warmups even as the rain moved in, but I only got 1 point in the Poenix game where we went from down 6-8 at half to a 15-13 win. That set us up for a a quarterfinals match against host PoNY, where we stayed with them through the first half and went up 10-9 before they ran off 6 in a row to win 11-15. I got in 5 points this game (4/1), and had my first and only true turnover of the tournament on a contested throw to Tous upfield. The rain had really started coming down during this game and when we found out our loss put us against Mephisto in the 5th place bracket I could feel the team's energy drop. I tried to pick up the team from the sidelines but didn't get put in, so I was also trying to not freeze under Kinsey's rain jacket. We went down 4-9 before the game got called due to waterlogged fields. We spent a few minutes trying to put turf back on top of the mud we'd kicked up with our cleats, shook hands with Mephisto and hit the road. Some clutch Wendy's on the way back, I napped in the back seat and then lost $5 in a bet to Rainwater that he couldn't make it home from the 206/287 intersection within 20 minutes. He made it in 18 with some serious speedage on 287 and Easton Ave.

While I look forward to practices for the opportunity to put in the work I need to, I'm also excited about how the team came together for the first 5.5 games this weekend. Even as I work to be a bigger part of this team, I'm looking forward to Pike rolling over other teams, as a team.