I was sure the site I ordered this from was going to just take my money, so this was a nice surprise yesterday.
I do seem to remember ordering two of them, though…
Great Royal Mail day!
Category Archives: sports
Pared it back this weekend
I still had some fun outdoor time but it was too hot to go hard.
Saturday morning tennis was just an hour but the humidity was over 70% so it was super-sweaty and gross. I got some new tennis shoes, too, so the hour-long session was a good break-in session.
I didn’t have team tennis yesterday afternoon, so we went a little further on the bike ride. Stella and I met some folks for Blueberry and we threw in a Bell Lap for good measure.
We ran across some folks managing a big copperhead that had gotten on the trail. It was kind of sketchy. It was also brutally hot and humid again. It’s great to get out and see friends on bikes but the weather definitely took a few points off of the experience.
My first “TNT” Thursday was a personally humid affair
I continued my headlong adventure back into tennis last night. At my pool there is a Thursday night men’s pickup tennis game. They call it “TNT”, which is maybe “Thursday Night Tennis”? It’s supposed to be casual and everyone brings beers to share at the end. There were only four of us there last night so we set up to play a couple of doubles sets. I actually made some shots and I had some first-serve success, which was nice.
After a while a 5th guy showed up so we started rotating a person out after every game. It was hot and I was sweating hard (as I’m still pretty fat and way out of shape), and I mean sweating such that I left some puddles under then bench after my turn to rotate out.
And then one of the guys left so the four of us remaining decided to play a set. At this point I’ve been playing for over two hours and I’m just soaked with sweat. It’s really gross. I’m leaving trails of sweat drops on the court. And then I see that I’ve left a wet footprint on the court which could be dangerous if one of us were to slip on it. I looked around to what I stepped in but, to my dismay, discovered that the footprints were coming from sweat leaking out of the tops of my shoes.
When I said gross, I meant gross.
I’m still having a great time playing. It’s fun and I’m getting a little better the more I go.
I am a Weekend Icarus
Sunday started with a very chill mountain bike ride out at Pocahontas State Park with my youngest and some friends. It’s really nice to see people out in the world, and riding bikes is a reasonable way to do it. An ice-cold beer in the shade afterward was a perfect capper.
And then I embraced the hubris and played in my first competitive tennis match. This tennis situation has progressed aggressively. I went from hitting balls on Saturday mornings with a buddy a month ago to joining the USTA and playing a doubles match on a team. It was *so hot* out. I don’t know that the morning bike ride ruined my tennis debut, but it certainly took a little out of the tank. We lost 6-1, 6-4.
This is the part where I express mindful gratitude for being physically capable of doing this stuff. I ask a lot of this old bag of bones and it continues to be there for me. I promise to keep icing these knees for as long as they’ll carry me.
Prem Champs!
There was a long delay but the outcome was inevitable.
I am happy for this little bit of light in an otherwise dark time.
YNWA
2020 RVA Open 1/19/2020
The Solid Sundays keep on rolling.
Last weekend I competed in the 2020 RVA Open, a weightlifting meet here in town. I was trying to get a competition total of 179kg, which would qualify me for competition at the 2020 American Open Series, which starts in March at The Arnold. I went a couple of years ago and it was a good time.
Here’s my last lift of the RVA Open:
This 105kg clean and jerk was a PR for me and secured a meet total of 183kg, more than enough to qualify for the Arnold.
As always, I have to give tremendous credit to my coaches, Chris and Maddie from The Weight Room (the best gym in RVA).
I copped this sweet medal:
Got a photo with these class gentlemen from my session:
And then rolled over to Banditos for food and cold ones with my family:
Like I said, solid.
Eli Manning is retiring.
Here’s what I wrote back in 2004(?!?!) when the Giants drafted him:
(sweet screencap from the Wayback Machine’s cache of my blog back then)
(I also 100% have that jersey hanging in my closet. I wore it when I watched the Giants play.)
(man, I really need to get those old Movable Type posts integrated here)
In his years as the New York Giants quarterback, he brought me a lot of good times. Also some bad times, but the good times were so damn good I forgive them.
Specifically:
and,
I watched these games with my family and they were stressful and exciting in the way that rooting for sports teams can be. Goddamn they were exciting.
Thanks for the memories.
I’m a bad golfer
But holy smokes, the weather was perfect.
And it’s always a good time to hang out with friends. It would have been cooler if I’d played well (and not lost so many goddamn balls).
