You would give me kiss if I was on soccer team!

Okay, that was a rigorous two hours of soccer last night. Well, honestly, it turned out to be about 1:45 of playing with 15 min of water breaks. As promised, I played the field and I did a lot (and I mean a LOT) of running. I didn't play any particular position. I roamed the field and went from midfield to defense to striker.

Still, this was a little intimidating. Me being both over 30 and over weight, and here I was playing against high school students. Granted, it made it a little easier since this was mostly the cross country team. However, there are many on the soccer team who run cross country to stay in shape. At the end of the night, the final score was 9-5, with my team on top. Of course I was very proud to have put in 4 of those goals!!

Granted, this was all unofficial. There was no coaching going on, and this was just for fun more than anything else, but it still felt good reminding these kids that as a coach, I actually seem to know what I am doing. There's nothing like schooling these kids who think I don't know anything.


Now I do have to admit that I got taken down by a girl half my size. It was one of my students from last year, so I'm sure she really enjoyed it. She had the ball and made a bad pass. So she tried to recover and I was on it too. Fortunately, I got there right before her and cleared the ball, but her leg got wrapped up in mine. She twisted my ankle pretty well, and while I was off balance she actually managed to flip me over. It was quite impressive, but looked awesome for her!!


All in all, it was a good sweat. Actually, it was quite disgusting how much I sweat last night, but that's another story. I don't use many sports drinks, but last night I had to get Powerade simply because of how drained I was. I am sore now, but it is a very good kind of sore!

I think that today, instead of riding, I am going to go and walk for a few miles. I haven't decided where yet, but I need to be ready for the next time we play.

(Oh, and if you don't get the title reference, go and look up Group X)

You know what excuses are like...

Well I have not been vigilant about my cycling recently. I have not ridden since last Thursday!! Now, I spent some of that time on "vacation." It wasn't exactly vacation... it was more of a necessary trip that we turned into fun time at a motel. This did, however, allow me to have some good time swimming, which I don't seem to get to do very often. So I put in about 25 laps in the motel's pool.

I got back super late on Friday, and Saturday through Monday had triple digit heat. Seriously, I cannot bring myself to go cycling in 106 degree weather. Would you? Okay, realistically you could if you got up earlier in the day, but I've been a night owl recently. That's what I do when I'm not teaching.

I wanted to ride today, but it is raining almost nonstop. And I'm not talking about the nice, pleasant, ride through the drizzle type of rain. I'm talking about yellow and red on Doppler kind of hell fire and damnation! It's proving to be very interesting weather.

Fortunately, it should be stopping in the late afternoon. Will I ride? Nope. Why not you ask? Because I get to go and play soccer. I have two hours of soccer planned with some friends from work and school. I am excited about that, and I promise that I will not play goal keeper (which was my position even when I was young and skinny) so that I have to run and frolic and actually sweat because I'm running!

I don't know if the word "frolic" has ever been used to describe something with soccer. I don't think it works, and I promise never to use it ever again.

Ever!

New Home Riding: Day 2

Today was a MUCH better ride. As I hoped, I left significantly earlier in the day (a little before 8:00). As one might expect, riding in 80 degrees is far preferable to riding in 100 degrees. I went about a quarter mile farther (5.3+ miles) and more than a minute faster (19:50) than I did yesterday. The hills felt about the same, but I was able to go faster over them, which sucked at the time, but feels good now.

Perhaps the best part of the ride was that I managed to break a true sweat, unlike yesterday.... Yesterday, I broke a sweat just by walking outside and staying there for more than 15 seconds. Today, I had a mild sweat for a majority of the ride, about 18 minutes in, my body started to really burn the calories. Unfortunately, it was there at the end, instead of a halfway through or something like that. Alas, I am on limited time today as I must leave soon to head down to Raleigh, NC for personal business.

Now for just a quick note on the area. I must admit that the people around here are much nicer than anticipated. They are (so far) very cyclist friendly! I mean seriously, they like wave and say hello and stuff. It's totally awesome to see. Now, I do not know if this is just my excitement of living in a new area, but so far I have no complaints about the locals. Not that I had any complaints about the locals where I was, but they certainly did not go out of their way to wave or greet me.

Goodbye to the long flat roads

I have been largely out of commission for a while. We purchased a home and moved 20 miles west of where I had been living and riding. Unfortunately, due to health issues with my wife's pregnancy, I had to do the move largely by myself. Now, I must admit that I had some help from some wonderful friends, but that's a story for another blog.

Today, I finally got back on the bike after taking 3 weeks to make our move and settle in decently. Now this is where it gets fun. The weather was a miserable 99 degrees and with the humidity, the heat index was well over 100! I hate riding in such heat, but I couldn't resist. It's simply been too long since I last rode.

Perhaps this was not the best idea as the heat proved to be quite unbearable. I started off well, and managed to eke out a little over 5 miles. However, I came limping back in, trying not to vomit from heat exhaustion. 

This was also my first introduction to the roads around here. I am happy to report that the hills are more bearable than I had anticipated. They are more pronounced than the flatlands from which I just moved, but all in all, they are not too bad.

I shall tackle them again tomorrow morning before I have to drive down to Raleigh. I hope to get out before the heat makes it as bad as it was today.... which means I should be in bed by now.