Another delayed update.

Sorry for yet another lapse in posting. It's been a pretty busy period of time, for me and the team, and I haven't been able to find the time to get on the computer and write something up. So let's see....

My last post was after a tough stair workout. We kept the rest of that week a bit easier, at least in terms of pounding on our joints. Wednesday was more of a throwing practice, which made it a lot less physically intensive but much more mentally frustrating. I actually remember feeling less optimistic at the end of this practice than I have at the end of any other practice or workout so far that season. Our team is currently very weak with regards to disc skills. We have a couple people who are very good at throwing, catching, marking, cutting, etc., but our level of experience drops off sharply after the top few players. For most of the team, a simple ten yard pass is not routine. They may complete this pass eighty-five percent of the time, but this requires a high level of concentration and we don't seem to get this from them all the time. These percentages fall even further when you add the element of a mark on the throw. We did the End Zone Drill with defense on the swing cut. This defender was supposed to prevent the cutter from going up line and scoring, and then trail around and set up a mark so that the thrower would have to complete a breakside throw in order to get it into the endzone. Let me tell you: we looked terrible. Awful. Asinine. We have people running every which way, slinging throws out of bounds or into their mark's legs, we had people dropping discs, we had people setting up their defense on the wrong side of their man so as to let him score up line if he so wished.... We looked like a bad team. It was totally discouraging.

I think that I allowed myself to get a little extra discouraged, however, because I wasn't playing well either. At the end of most of the practices that occurred before this point, I could step back and say, "Okay, a lot of people had trouble throwing and catching, but we have a young team and that's something that we're working on. At least I met some of my own expectations and I think that I'm improving my own skill set." No, I think that I had six turnovers that practice, and that is an unacceptable number for me. So yes, the team sucked a ton that practice, and I sucked a bunch too. Let's move on.

Thursday we were in Curry Hicks. We ran five sets of three 165's (one lap around that goofy-assed track), trying to keep ourselves at 25 seconds or so per lap. I think I was only able to run a couple at 25; most of mine were more like 27-29. But I'm slow, so I don't know what to say about that. I think it was a pretty good workout for the team, and I'm glad that everybody pushed through and got it done, even if there was a bit of grumbling about it being sort of a daunting workout.

Friday we had mostly a throwing practice down at the parking lot. It was cold and raining and pretty windy, which is exactly the conditions in which we need to learn to throw and catch. Every year, either Sectionals or Regionals has at least one day that hits us with freezing, sideways rain. Preparing to deal with these elements is a major key to success in our bullshit Region. We ran through a quick warmup, and then Robin called us all over to give us a bit of a talk. I guess he wanted to go around in a circle and tell everybody what they had been doing right and what they need to work on in order to contribute to our team. He said a bunch of things that I think needed to be said in front of everybody, which was good, but I found myself wishing that he had chosen a slightly different time to do it. The conversation went a little long, and sitting on freezing cold pavement pretty much negated the warmup that we had just completed. I also think that he took on a bit of a condscending tone, which I think he would really benefit from losing. Robin is a phenomenal player, a great friend, and an enthusiastic teammate. However, for several reasons (some which are in his control and some which are not), he always feels a little distanced from the team. This is partly because of his anxiety problems, which prevent him from traveling with us to tournaments that are farther away, and partly because he played for a very successful high school team and has always played for successful club teams, which sometimes makes him take on a rather elitist attitude and makes him look down on some of our less experienced players. All of this presents the illusion that Robin is almost off to the side, staring down his nose at the hard working majority of the team while he just kind of does his own thing. This is a lot of the reason why I hope that Robin can start avoiding situations that seem like he is being condescending - since he already appears to be above the team law, any condescending attitude that he may exude is going to be grossly exaggerated in the eyes of our younger players. I want Robin to be firmly and fully imbedded in our team, neither above us or below us in anybody's estimation. Talking to people as if he is more of a coach than a player really works against that goal, and I wish that he had phrased his speech in a less coachly manner. Again, not that he didn't say some things that needed to be said - I think that the Content of his talk was actually very good. After he finished, we broke into pairs and each threw 100 forehands and 100 backhands, switching sides every 25 minutes to deal with both upwind and downwind throws.

Sunday was a tough plyo workout. We used the same circuit stations that we have for all previous plyo workouts. After the second time through the circuit, instead of jumping at the rim or just taking a short break, we broke into groups of four and did a backwards and forwards shuttle run relay race, which is what we did the week before instead of suicides. We did four sets of three runs each, with 45 seconds between each set. Then, between our third time through the circuit and our pushups, we did two sets of three suicides. This is an improvement from the single set of suicides that we had completed on past weeks. It was exhausting. After pushups, we did another set of suicides with the understanding that we would have an extra set if we weren't able to finish in under 6:45. This was very difficult; I guess the extra suicides we did earlier really sapped our energy. After a slow start, we all ran absolutely tremendous third suicides and barely beat our goal time. Exellent. We finished with abs, stretched, and called it a day. While it probably wasn't our best workout of the year in terms of performance, and we had pathetically low numbers (16 A teamers, I think), I am pretty satisfied with the way that we gritted through that workout. This was absolutely the most running that we have done during Sunday plyos this year. While adding some shuttle runs and an extra set of suicides doesn't seem like that big a deal, we did it on a day where we were really careful not to take longer breaks than we had intended. These two factors combined to make Sunday into our most tiring workout of the season, thus far.

Oh, and my cleats finally arrived! Jeff Steeves brought them out from Needham and I finally got my hands on them after practice on Sunday. They are glorious. When Mitch first saw them, he said, "Well, at least you've got the headache factor on your side," and I couldn't agree more. They are everything that I hoped for. I'll try to get some pictures that I can put up here.

We took Monday off, and then Tuesday we had a stair workout at Lederle, since Monday was a snow day. I felt like a total bitch, but I sat out of the workout in order to rest my shin splints. My shins had been getting tighter and tighter as the season has progressed, and the stretches that the doctor gave me haven't really been helping. I decided that I needed to rest and ice for a couple days to loosen them up a bit before I got back into working out. Frankly, the pain isn't really the problem (even though they do hurt like a bitch). It's really the loss of power that is concerning me. If they just hurt, I would grit my teeth and get through it like a man, but these shin splints are preventing my muscles from firing to anything near their full potential. I've recently been running very slow, even for me, and I want to head this off before it becomes a real detiment to our season. The rest of the team looked great doing stairs, though. I'm proud of them.

I also sat out Wednesday, but I went to the gym before practice and rode an exercise bike to get some cardio in for the day. I made that a pretty tough workout, and then headed to Curry Hicks for practice. Apparently, there were high school girls' basketball games scheduled for Curry Hicks that day, so we weren't able to use the track. Most of the team went for an interval run, while I stayed behind with a couple other injured kids and watched their backpacks and coats. I expected that they'd only be gone for half an hour or so, but they didn't come back for an hour and fifteen minutes. I guess they decided to go to Boyden at the end of their run to stretch and do abs, and they just didn't bother swinging by to tell the rest of us to join them. It was very inconsiderate (we would have liked to have gone inside and do abs too!), but not really a big deal. I told them to go fuck themselves and stormed off, but the storming off part was mostly because I was late to cook dinner with Jesse. I don't think anybody took it terribly personally, though.

Yesterday we had practice at our parking lot. We did the End Zone Drill for a while, which was frustrating (as always) because a significant portion of our team still isn't 100% with ten yard throws and catches. I took part in this practice, and while my shins still don't feel perfect, they weren't as tight as they have been. Hopefully I'm getting past these damn splints. We broke up into pairs and threw 100 forehands and 100 backhands. I really hope that we can improve our throwing and catching skills just by jamming repitition over and over again. I can't speak for everybody, but I have seen a bit of an improvement in some of our players, most notably Tim. His throws are still inconsistant, and get increasingly wild as he gets frustrated, but his form seems to be getting more fundamentally sound. My throws are also feeling smoother and more automatic, and a few other people seem to be in the same position. Some people, though... some people don't seem to be improving much at all. Maybe we're hitting some sort of plateau as a team. I'll look into finding some new throwing drills or something.

Today, we are mostly going to work on a bit of throwing and walk through our offensive and defensive sets. I want to start to get everybody on the same page with regards to the way that we want to run our team in games. With our first scrimmage against Amherst College tomorrow at 2 (get excited!), I want to have everybody ready to work together and run like a team in competition.

Things are also moving forward in the administrative sense. I think that uniforms are finally being taken care of, as Pategonia has supposedly decided to send the proper forms to our school. Babbitt and I reserved hotels for Georgia, and we are going to arrange to pay for our UPA memberships at the beginning of next week. We also registered our team for the College Championship Series, or at least we registered all of the players whose UPA ID #'s we knew as of last Thursday night. I tried to go on to add the final couple this afternoon, but I couldn't figure out how to sign in to our newly registered team. Hopefully Babbitt will call me back in a little bit to offer me some insight into this matter. Henry also called Indoor Action in Greenfield to try to schedule some indoor practice time for us using the leftover funds in our Fee Account, which we can't really use for much else. While we were hoping to get some practice time prior to our tournaments in Georgia, this seems like an unlikely possibility considering the short time we have left. Hopefully we can get some quality indoor practice time in between Spring Break and Roll Call.