Week 14

208.8/211.6

"Be bold. If you're going to make an error, make a doozy, and don't be afraid to hit the ball." - Billie Jean King

That advice served me well at this week's soccer game, where we lost again. The score was 4-2, and one of the four happened after a man on the other team Cruyff-ed me, the stopper, and ran past the sweeper for an easy goal. Later my footwork and timing improved, and I got a couple good touches and chased a couple strikers outside to prevent them from getting good position or passing opportunities. It was hard, and I'm still not considering myself in the same league as these guys, but I'm improving, in skill and wind, with every game.

The aforementioned guy who baited me out of position with fancy footwork got yellow-carded later in the game for colliding with our goalie, and his buddy got red-carded for kicking one of our team in the knee. There were a couple other hard pushes, but things settled down after the one guy (Mario, I think was his name) got booted. I lost my footing while chasing a guy down, and caught him in the shoulder with a flailing hand. After the ball got kicked away from us, I apologized to him and we slapped hands and continued. That seemed to be the turning point where the players stopped trying to be World Cup, and played more like the recreational league this is supposed to be.

My goal is to get in good health, and these sort of antics worry me, as I don't want to get crippled by a minor-league testosterone/adrenalin junkie trying to appease his inner-manchild. I'm glad I'm on defense, as I can better control the distance between me and my opponent. I'm also hoping as my wind improves that I can chase down the more aggressive players until they lose some fury. That's a few more games coming, though. This game I wasn't sucking wind at the end, and my best plays came in the fourth quarter, but I'm still not in peak physical form.

I am, however, at the point where my stomach embarrasses me less, and I signed myself up at the Westerville Rec Center, where I plan to spend a lot of time in the weight room, on the track, and in a couple more weeks I plan on overcoming my modesty and hitting the pool with my kid. This week and next she will be with mom, and I've been working the cardio, sweating, and doing sit-ups aggressively (hence the improvement in weight loss this week) in preperation.

According to some math I've done with the Navy body fat percent formulas, when I reach 200 pounds, my abdomen (not my waist, but the fattest part of my belly) will be 37 inches in circumference, down from the whopping 49 inches I started at back in March. Where I'm at now is an improvement over where I started, to be sure, but I'd like to trim up slightly more before exposing my chest to the world. If I can hit 200-ish by the time I see my kid next, then I'll take my first swim with her since she was 4.