This is another minor effort to appease the Karma Gods.
Look! Halifax players playing in Boston! Look how good they are! Doesn’t Ultimate look like fun?! Please let us play this weekend! I’ll give you a cookie! Your hair looks really nice today!
(Was that too desperate?)
UPDATE: The Karma Gods have smiled! The tournament is on! Montreal, here we come!
Sigh.
The Master’s team is heading off to Montreal this weekend to play in the Montreal Jazz Tournament. It’s our one real opportunity to play a tournament at an elite level (i.e., get our asses handed to us) before Nationals. The tournament does not actually have a Masters division, which means we are playing in the same division as all the young guys (see “asses handed to us”).
But — shocker! — My Lovely Wife decided on Friday that she wanted to come up with me! She NEVER comes to tournaments with me, so this is a big deal. It did mean dipping a little further into debt to buy her a plane ticket and getting us a separate hotel room. (Previously, I was just planning on sharing a hotel room with a passel of sweaty guys. Heavy emphasis on “sweaty”. Hell, the emphasis on “sweaty” is so heavy that bolding and italicising the word just won’t cut it. Imagine the word is on fire. That might give you the proper feeling of emphasis. And now back to our tale.) But debt is a constant — us taking a vacation is a rare, rare occasion, especially a vacation that doesn’t entail going to visit family.
To add to the excitement, we finagled our dear friends Otto and Jen to come up for the weekend too! I managed to get a spot for the Otto on the team for the weekend, and Jen was coming to hang out with Beth (i.e., NOT hang out at the fields with us).
So, everything’s coming up freaking cookies and teddy bears, right?
Ha.
Last night, this notice appears on the tournament website:
IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT – Monday, June 26th, 2006
Dear MJT teams,
There is a possibility that this year’s tournament will be cancelled due to inclement weather, as the forecast is calling for rain all week in Montreal. So far, the city has seen a very wet spring and early summer, and some of the Douglas fields will not be in useable condition if the rain continues this week as forecasted. Unfortunately, there are no alternative sites within the city that can host the number of teams scheduled to attend the tourney, nor are multiple sites available during that weekend.
We will continue to assess the situation and will keep you informed. A final decision about whether the tournament will be cancelled will be made late Wednesday/early Thursday morning. The news will be posted on the website as well as emailed out to all captains.
Crap on a stick.
So right now, the Karma Gods are hovering on high, karma sticks lightly held in their multitudinous hands, just waiting… waiting…
I will be spending the next several days making burnt offerings of Gummi Bears and salt & vinegar chips, praying that they appease the great and terrible Karma Gods.
All I ask of you, my pine-fresh readers, is that you send your voices on high on our behalf.
Pray to the Karma Gods.
Pray.
Right. Here’s another one of those sporadic Ultimate posts that I toss out every now and then. Not interested? Then it’s a perfect cookie time for you. Enjoy!
[Pitter-patter of cookie-seeking feet. Silence.]
They gone?
Ok.
It’s June 2. Two months and fifteen days until Nationals.
And for once, I’m actually training properly. With a program and everything.
One of my constant issues on the field is just getting tired and burning myself out. This causes several problem for me:
Solution: Sprint Interval Training. Thanks go to Todd MacAuley, who gave me this program. Say “Hi!” to Todd, everybody:
I’ve just started week 4 of an 8-week sprint interval training program. Basically, each week is three or four workouts. Each workout, after warming up, is a number of sets of short-to-mid distance sprints — for example, last night was a warm-up followed by sets of 1×200m, 4×100m, 1×600m, 1×400m, 3×600m. Each sprint is about 85% of my top speed for that distance (I had to spend one workout just getting times for each of the distances).
Each distance has a set time to complete the run and a set time that I get to rest between repetitions. So, while I don’t have to go full speed on these sprints, I do have to maintain the same speed for each repetition in the set. When you have to do 8 repetitions of 100m late in a workout, that can get tough.
But that is what the program is designed to improve — not just running speed, but on your recovery-speed. Training the body to sprint and then recover quickly so that you can do it again, at a whole variety of distances.
I’m loving it. I’m feeling like I’m actually accomplishing something. The workout is set-up completely — run now, stop for this long, run again, and so on right to the end. When it’s over, that’s the n-th workout for the n-th week DONE. I’m getting somewhere.
I’ve already noticed a change. Not so much in my actual speed (because the difference between mediocre speed and slightly-less-mediocre speed is not that stunning) but in my recovery time. Now when I sprint on the field, my body is much faster at getting back to the point where I can do it again. And again. And again.
And not being so tired has also helped reduce the number of my exhausted-brain-mistakes. (Yes, I still have those dumb-brain-mistakes hanging over my head, but let’s focus on the wins here, people.)
So I feel, for basically the first time, that my fitness is actually moving along at a steady, progressive pace and that it’s not the monkey on my back that it usually is. And that’s a very good place to be. For me.
(Oh, and My Lovely Wife says that my chicken legs aren’t quite so “chicken-leg-y”. The wins just keep piling up!)
Did I mention that Halifax is hosting the 2006 Canadian Ultimate Championships?
But did I mention that I am the Communication Director?
(Pause.)
No! I did not!
Does it involve poo and cats and zombies?
Strangely, no! The powers-that-be seem to think that I actually have some other skills that may come into play.
Fools.
Why am I mentioning all this?
Because I got to design the logo for the event. And that makes me as pleased as punch.
I’m getting me a cookie now.
Once upon a time, I used to write things about Ultimate. Oh, there were glorious days, days filled with sunshine and burritoes, and the burritoes were filled with even more sunshine and just a little glee.
But then the dark days came upon us, days of darkness and tacos, tacos of despair and sadness.
Well folks, the days of burritoes are back — this here’s an Ultimate post.
(If you’re waiting for kittens or hippos, this ain’t your post. Move along.)
Today, we shall discuss the The Herd and The Lunge.
The Herd
(This was described to me at the FruitBowl Indoor Ultimate tourney two weeks ago by Greg the Bunny.)
When you are defending a player, it is very easy to get stuck in a reactionary frame of mind where you spend all your time following your mark. This leads to being a step or two behind at all times, as you have to react to their actions.
Instead, Greg said that what he thinks about is is actively herding his defender — he works at positioning himself in a manner that forces the other player to adjust his own position, herding him to the part of the field that is most advantageous for the defender. So, instead of being on the, well, “defensive”, he is actively working to affect where his mark is positioned and where his mark is able to cut to. It’s so much more proactive than just chasing your mark.
And it works on the offence as well! Instead of just looking to cut for the disc or clear out of the cutting lanes, the offensive player can also work at herding his defender into a position which opens up space for other cutters or for the handler to throw a disc to the offensive player in a German situation.
All of this is stuff that a lot of players do anyways, but we all agreed that this idea of actively thinking about herding was a very useful way of thinking.
Herding. It’s not just for sheepdogs anymore.
The Lunge
This is a new way to catch the disc (or, at least new to me) which was taught to me by Chris Dabrowski (he who is to be freed). He went out to BC for a year and said that this is something that a lot of the elite players out there are working on.
When a player runs to catch the disc, the standard way that one is taught to catch the disc is the pancake — catch the disc by slapping your hands together on the middle of the disc . Its very safe and everyone knows how to do it.
But with this new lunging catch, the player reaches out with both hands, palms down, and catches the disc along the rim between the palms and the thumbs (like you’re catching it with two hand puppets).
At first, it doesn’t seem like a big deal. But the lunge does have a slight reach advantage on the pancake (catching along the rim instead of the middle of the disc), which can make all the difference in a race against a defender. Also, with the pancake catch, sometimes the inclination is to let the disc come in closer to the belly when catching, giving the defnder even more time to knock it away. Lastly, the action of the lunge (reaching out to clamp the disc between your hands) acts like a body mnemonic, making your whole body reach forward. All these things together can help you, as the receiver, have a greater chance to beat a defender to a disc.
I haven’t fully put this new method of catching into practice, but I fully intend to work on it.
God knows, I need all the help I can get.
(Hey, no kittens or hippos, but I did get hand puppets in there. Don’t say I don’t do anything for you.)
