Well, I finally found some soccer! It's quite a bit different than I'm used to, but I am just thrilled to be playing again. Maybe I should rephrase that - I am just thrilled to be attempting to play again. I thought I was prepared for how bad I was going to be after not playing for 3 months, being completely out of shape from lack of exercise, and recovering from bronchitis, but it was so much worse. It is especially depressing when you imagined you'd be bad, but it was more like REAL bad (just imagine an uncoordinated turtle and you're pretty close). Sigh.
Let's not talk about that sad subject anymore. How was it so different you ask? First off, it's 6-a-side and the games are at lunchtime on the base. The field is much smaller than normal which I greatly appreciate at this point of my out-of-shapeness. So are the goals, but then I rarely remember to shoot anyway so the size of the goal is mostly immaterial to me. The fields are terrible - they're bumpy and have scraggly grass at best (my ankle let me know later how much it didn't like it). Since the fields are right next to the runway, you occasionally have to plug your ears when the fighter jets take off (they are indescribably loud), but I can't blame that for my patheticness (oh wait, I wasn't going to talk about that anymore). They don't play offsides so there are often people up front sharking (that's their word for what we call cherry-picking).
Those who have played with me know that playing at lunch is really not good for my self-image since after I got back to the office my coworkers took one look at my beet-red face and wondered if I was okay. I think they play 15 or 20 minute halves, but it went by so fast I couldn't really tell. It still took me almost an hour after I was back at my desk to stop sweating - so much for cleaning up afterward. It was even longer before my face flare-up subsided.
The most important part was we tied 0-0 so I could at least console myself that I didn't hurt the team---much.
No comments:
Post a Comment