Week 12

213.0/215.9

"Fatigue is the best pillow." - Benjamin Franklin

Success! This last Friday, I managed, three times, to make it up all 134 stairs at the dam at a brisk jog. On the third attempt, my legs were close to buckling at the end, but I made it. My heart didn't give out, and I wasn't sucking wind for too long afterwards, but the final walk back down the steps was a little alarming as I tried to keep my legs from shaking, and myself from inadvertently reenacting a bad Jerry Lewis slapstick skit, or that last scene from The Exorcist.

On Sunday, I played in all four quarters of my team's soccer game, totaling about 50 minutes of field time of an 80 minute game. At the end, I was pretty dehydrated, and had some scrapes on my heels from the new cleats, but was otherwise unscathed, thanks to good stretching and not trying anything stupid on the field. Sunday night I slept soundly. Monday morning, my alarm rang several hours earlier than my body wanted to get up, and even though I was miserable getting out of bed, I couldn't stop smiling. It's good to be active again; a body is meant to exert itself. Yesterday's two-day-after pain was pretty bad, as my leg muscles tried to finish healing all the microtears and such I gave them from all the sprinting. Game running and even-paced jogging are different animals, apparently.

The soccer game was unusually high-scoring. We won 7-6, thanks to a fantastic last-minute leaping shot by Jim, the team's captain and the man who invited me to play. Highlight real material, unlike my own performance. I was right-side fullback for most of the game, and a couple times the other team's offense really had my number. Towards the end of the game, I got more aggressive and got some good reads on people, and found some accuracy and power in my kicks. Fun game, good camaraderie, and everyone was eager to come back next week and do it again. Including me.

I don't know how much running I'll do this week while waiting for my scrapes to heal, but I've found I can get the heart pumping pretty good at home by doing a light weight, high repetition circuit at home with freeweights and ab work. I'm not as fit as I'd like to be out there, but I think in another week or two I'll be more an asset than a liability to the gang, both in terms of endurance and field-sense.

Since I've been running more, and I'm inching my steadily towards the 200 pound mark, I've been thinking about signing up for the Independence Day 5k run. After my heals get back in shape, I'll have to try to mark out three miles on the Hoover Dam bike trail and see if I can manage jogging that far. If I can't do that yet, I'm not going to be to disappointed, and stick to the soccer and weight loss a while longer. If I can, I think I'd really enjoy running in a local event. More news next week to see if that's going to happen or not.