Biking and Agility

In the past week, they oiled and graveled all the roads near my house which has basically rendered my road bike useless.  To get myself to the fields, I went with my old mountain bike, a Giant Iguana that my parents gave me as a 12 year birthday present.  It's a _little_ under-sized, but gets the job done.

Warm-up:

2.2 miles biking
Active Stretching

Agility Ladder:

30 minutes of drills on the agility ladder

Cone Drill #1 (demo):

12 reps

2.2 miles biking

Sectionals, Day 2

After a nice first round bye, we started the day off with two final pool play games against the 11th and 14th seeds (I think) before the final against Slow White.  After losing to our crosstown rivals twice at Chesapeake, we were eager for some revenge.  And so we came out and promptly got scored on and broken to go down 2-0.  After that initial hiccough, the O steadied and we traded points until 6-4, at which point, our defensive pressure started opening up some cracks.

We battled back to tie the game 7-7 and proceeded to score 3 straight goals (called back for offensive foul, pick, offensive foul), before finally scoring one that counted to take half 8-7.  The sequence to end the half seemed to shake Slow White and from there, it was all Ghosts.  We went on a 10-3 run and took the game 14-9.

On a personal note, I played much better this time around and felt stronger, faster and more agile, but though my footwork is improving, that first layout catch-block still managed to elude me.  I felt like I was in position a couple of times but didn't pull the trigger fast enough and missed the opportunity.  Somewhat surprisingly, O seems to have come back much more easily.  I felt confident cutting down-field as well as handling on occasion for the D line.  Top gear is also still not where I'd like it.  I had a few full field sprints with cutters and while I felt I should be able to blow past them with ease, it was a struggle to stay even.  I'm not sure how much of that is physical and how much of that is a reluctance to open it up.  Either way, there will be lots of sprint and agility work in my future.

Sectionals, Day 1

I'm not sure quite how, but I managed to get completely lost in Devens and ended up arriving at the fields right before game time.  That was about the extent of the drama for the day as we rolled through our opponents to go 4-0 on the day.

Speed and Agility

I biked to the SuCO track only to find there was a field hockey game in full swing, so I turned around and biked up to the upper intramural fields to do my workout.

Warm-up:

2.5 miles biking
Active Stretching

45:00 Agility Ladder

Flying 30s Workout:

Plyo Warm-ups, 30 yards
3 x Accelerators, Accelerate smoothly for 30, then stride 30
3 x 30 yard full sprint
3 x 60 yard full sprint
3 x 90 yard full sprint

2.5 miles biking

Snatches, Pull-ups & Tabatas

Warm-up:

10:00 Rowing Machine 
Active Stretching

21-15-9:

Right Arm Dumbbell Snatch, 20lbs
Left Arm Dumbbell Snatch, 20lbs
Pull-ups

5:00 Exercise Bike

Tabatas:

Chuck Kellers (agility: jump laterally back and forth over plyo box)
Double Unders (aka: Tabata self-flagellation)

4:00 Exercise Bike

Biking and Track Workout

After two weeks of nothing, I was itching to get out and do some work.  Next weekend is sectionals, so there's not much time to work with.  I hoped on my bike and rode 2.2 miles up over the mountain and down to SUNY Oneonta's track where I did the following:

Warm-up:

Active Stretching
1/2 Mile Run

4 rounds of:

Sprint 200m
10 x Sit-ups
10 x Push-ups
10 x Burpees
10 x Squats

My original plan was to do 8 rounds of this, but a huge thunderstorm blew in and I had to bug out since I didn't want to be on a mountain top in the middle of it.    Before leaving I decided to test things out with one full sprint 100m.  I felt some soreness and tightness out of the block, but once I got up to a full sprint, I felt pretty good.  The last 20 yards, I was able to push to a higher gear which I sorely missed at Chesapeake.  I'm going to need to hit that repeatedly and effortlessly by Regionals if I'm going to be able to truly play my game.  After that, it was back on the bike to race the storm home.  I had just crested Blend Hill, when the rain began, but was able to make it home before the true nastiness began.  It retrospect, the storm may have helped me out.  It may not have been the best idea to push the knee that hard on Day 1.  Time will tell.  Lots of icing and stretching followed since I plan on hitting the gym tomorrow.

Knee Time

Some time on Saturday of Chesapeake, I apparently did something not-so-great to my right knee.  I had Mary Ellen check it out and her diagnosis was a mild bruise, sprain or strain to the inside of my knee where the MCL and hamstrings tie in and she advised I stay off it for a couple of weeks.  Grrr...

So, with the exception of 3 straight days of moving, and the hauling of stuff that moving entails, I did my best to let things heal up a bit.  I did a lot of stretching, movement exercises, and some body-weight work, but not much else for two weeks.  It was hard to sit out like that, especially after Chesapeake.

I felt like I did a good job building up a strong base leading into Chesapeake and that the tournament itself was a boost to my fitness, so to sit around and watch that atrophy sucked.  So instead of getting fast and agile for Sectionals, my goal changed to getting healthy.

Chesapeake Invite, Day 2

I awoke Sunday morning and nearly fell down the stairs as my right knee apparently forgot how to bend overnight.  Not good!  I spent most of the morning wondering if I was going to be able to play at all and doing my best to disguise my concern from everyone since we were already short people, I feel like I still gotta earn my roster spot, and Goddammit I ain't going out like that!

After some vitamin I and a lot of warming up, it loosened up and by the 2nd half of our first game, I hardly noticed it.  No idea what the hell that was all about!  Anyway, we rolled our first opponents and won our quarters match-up against District 5 without too much ado.  That game was pretty close, at least until Jeff Graham decided he was going to take over.  Then it wasn't.  That put us in the semis for a rematch with Slow White.

Similar to our first match-up, we had difficulties generating pressure on D, though we were somewhat more efficient scoring on O.  In the end, we fell by a 13-10 margin.

The team itself looks very promising, especially since we were missing 10 people for the tournament and 3 of us had never played for the Ghosts before.  As for myself, I was somewhat disappointed in my play.  I played decent shutdown defense, scored and threw a few goals, and kept my turnovers pretty low, but only managed an occasional block.  I wasn't able to overpower anyone with speed or agility on the weekend, which was pretty much my hallmark so that will be my motivation for training in the coming weeks.  My footwork was sloppy, my changes of direction were slow, and my extra gear was not there.  Probably more than anything, the supreme comfort on the field was missing.  The ability to just take everything in and move and react naturally wasn't there and that really means the difference between excelling and just getting by.  Come regionals, I need to excel again.

On a positive note, my legs and lungs held out the entire time, and while I was puffing after a few of the longer points, I was able to recover and get back out there.  And though I'm a little sore in spots the day after, for the most part, I feel good and strong and ready for the speed and agility workouts to come.

Chesapeake Invite, Day 1

My initial thought after having completed my first club point in 2.5 years was, "WTF was I thinking?  No way I'm getting through two days of competition."  Thankfully, after the initial shock to the system, my body started to remember what this was all about.  The training I did in the last month definitely paid off, and while I'm not physically where I normally would be at late August, my base is solid.

The Ghosts were a missing a third of our roster for the Invite, which meant a lot of PT and a lot of much needed reps.  Apparently the team hadn't played together in two months, and so I wasn't the only one shaking the rust off, something that became apparent when we lost our very first game to a decent, but not spectacular, Bucket from Atlanta.  We started gelling a little better after that first game and beat Ant Madness relatively easily.  Next up was AMP, and after falling behind a bit early, we clawed back from 10-11 to win 13-11.  That set us up for a crossover with regional rivals Slow White.

We battled in this game, but the D had a lot of difficulty bringing pressure until the very end of the game and we fell 10-13.  Drat... no first round bye for us Sunday morning.

Somewhat mollifying was the spectacular crab dinner provided by Marika's parents at the family farm!  My crab eatin' skills needed some work, but by the end of the night, I was getting pretty good.

Redfish Run

Warm-up:

6:45 Run
Active Stretching

Redfish Run:

10 x Tabata Sprints (sprint :20, rest :10)
10 x 40-40s (jog 40 yards, sprint 40 yards)

5:40 Run