time trial, blog review

What was i thinking. Saturday, I couldn't even make the wheels roll, Sunday, and Monday were walk backwards down stairs, tuesday was 32 minutes at 8:45 pace and it felt like i was dying, wednesday was 20 minutes of limping. Today I did the team time trial.

I couldn't help it. It's what I do. 2006, august, 12:52, 2007 I couldn't run in august b/c of injury, but I repeated the run at the end of the season in 12:25, and today, i ran it in 12:31. I'm not PROUD of the result but I was still pretty toast, and even worse, I ran an absolutely terrible first 400 meters (90 seconds). My next 600 meters were the worst as I necked way down to get my motor back, and frankly, the 12:31 was not a disaster. I am going to run it again next week when i'm 'fresh' (that is fresh after this coming weekend's coaches mini camp of

sat 45 mile ride/2mile paddle
sunday 11 mile hike, 5 mile hill run (max effort)
monday 13 mile run (easy), 2 mile paddle. I think i'll skip the bike back at that point.

But by wednesday, I should be able to crank, and I will, with the goal of 12:00 even. I may cheat: and get some pacing help from a couple kids who are making up the TT and can't run the race the next day.

All things considered, I'm pretty happy with life. I'd like to think it's pretty odd for 38 year olds to make progress in this way, and I think I have 7 years to sort of 'peak' in my second career as a middle distance runner.

As an aside, there is a 15 year theory that holds, that, no matter when you start doing an event, you will continue to improve for 15 years. The idea, then, would be that your frisbee career would PEAK 15 years after you started, barring physical break down. Obviously, in a demanding, cutting sport like ultimate, starting when you are 10-15 would be ideal. But just 'cause you peak in a year, doesn't mean that a 10 year old couldn't have a 25 year career: it just means that at 25 they might be their best, but could conceivably still be good for 10 more years... just not their best.

Personally, I started when I was 20, but I would say my best 2 years were when I was 31 or 32, living in bend, commuting to play with sockeye. And with markedly diminished sport specific regimens, my game play at age 34-35 was pretty good. Now, 17 or 18 years in, my feeling is that, without a team to focus on, I can't continue to IMPROVE: but that i can still 'do it.'

Nuff said. Coaches corner.

On worlds:
You can't imagine my sadness in seeing sockeye lose. This is my team. While they may have passed me by, 12 of those guys were my team mates for 1 or more years, and another 6 of those guys are former team mates of mine on varied other teams. I have the utmost respect for furious, and having never won a national title (somehow sockeye went on to win 3 without me. ahem. outlast, outwit, outsmart, out-out-foul-luke), I still feel a more recent connection w/ fish than chain (still got big love for kid, barrett and a bunch of younguns who i only got to play against when i was a 26 yearold college senior). Just a bummer, and I can't speak to the play of the games, other than to say, i hope payback comes in the form of a national title.

On RSD. Gawd almighty it sucks. I can't even bring myself to do a thread review. Todd continues to mask relatively valid points with hyperbole (but, see, I know the guy, and I've seen him play, and played with him, and frankly, ON THE PITCH, he was great) so I can look past the absurdity, Frank continues his rants (but, while I've not played with Frank, I've had some one-on-one e-chat, and frankly (no pun intended) his desires are not impossible, it's his general unwillingness to deal with people... and then there's the latest kook, who's just brought a desire to extrapolate pickup to the real world. shit.

How bout a Blog review.
KD brings tremendous depth to his writings. Frankly, I make no claim to either his command of the syntax, grammar, or most significantly, language in his writing. Truly beautiful stuff that should honestly be finding a place in a literary magazine, not this pathetic venue. I hope he's working on a novel.
I claim only to have an honest voice. I guess I should draw inspiration from Ken's command of the language, but I go the route, why try to compare myself to his strengths. A caveat: In my few (two) (lame) publishing credits, I have tried to use real grammar.
Match: I appreciate the effort, but there are just some things that make me puke. 'Cogs in a wheel' Varied painful misspellings, bizarre homonyms, odd, weird thoughts that remind me of jackie harvey. But, Match, if you bother to read this, Aplus for effort, and I note the improvement, and applaud the mssui-ish effort.
Mssui: Seriously, is this Cyle? Is half that shit true? And I thought I had a checkered college career.
Frosty: Don't know the guy. Takes his shit seriously. I approve, even if I think a lot of this may be just as faddish as the whole run forever slow thing (which I think he and dusty think I do, but really, I never jog. I RUN. And when I train for frisbee, I run FASTER.
Al: I almost threw Al and Jim in the same line, just for humors sake after years of referring to them as stadler and waldorf. By the way, by far the largest sets of hits to my site are from people searching for stadtler and waldorf, so you guys are getting some hits from me. Guy could always play, even when he was deliriously thinking he got a layout block on me. Truth be told, I never got enough playing time for him to get a block on me. And, I remember every block on me in 18 years. They are few and far between. I'm usually not open enough to be a target. Anywhoo, great blog, selfabsorbed, detailed, pics. Sweet.
Jim: Losing ground on his formerly ridiculously stat heavy set, or gaining ground in talking to people, Jim has entertained me for years.
Billy: Second only to Kenny in language, maybe most captivating in terms of frisbee, he had us all going for a year. Speedy recovery on the Leg.
Flash: Must read for a perhaps small set of us who were around at a certain time, and his link to his poker buddy is fascinating stuff.
DlK: Oh, why, oh why did you run away.
Dar. Oh, let's not forget Dar's blog, lives in denver, wife works with my brother, who lives in dublin.

And yes, I still type deja.com to get to google groups.