Gym Today

I was doing a pretty standard warmup today in the weigh room: push-presses, squats, snatches, overhead squats, double under practice...

and I was feeling very routine . So I decided to surprise myself. I know that sounds like a weird statement, but I just happened to think about doing Fran with no prior planning and then just did it. It is a intimidating workout so it was kinda fun to push myself to go to that level without mental preparation.

Three rounds, 21-15- and 9 reps, for time of:
95 pound Thruster
Pull-ups

The result?

Time: 10:54.


To be honest, I'm not that happy with my time, but I am very happy that I all my reps were legit. Ive attempted this workout before but I had to rest A LOT and reps were sloppy. I'm just gonna go ahead and consider this as my first real attempt - the others don't really count.

The alternation of Thruster and Pullup is perfect. I felt like my body was gonna fall over after the thrusters but really I was just fatigued in the push-type muscles and I could continue to hit the gas with the pull-type muscles letting the pusher rest. With this mix I could really maintain the intensity the whole time.

The result?

A shitload of chalk got used and the floor got a big wet sweat angel afterwords. I literally could not get off the floor for a minute.

After catching my breath 10 minute later I decided to do some 40inch box jumps. Bad idea.
I was fine for a while, did my 20 and decided to be done. Then this new guy on my team comes in and I give them some squatting advice. To further impress them, I go for a few more massive box jumps. I am over tired and not focusing; my shin and ego pay the price.



On one hand, hurting yourself in the weight room sucks - the possibility of an injury is probably what keeps many people away. But in another way, I like the pain of a dropped weight, ripped callous, and a failing muscle. This new minor shin contusion reminds me that I actually am working hard, I actually am pushing myself. Yes, it is masochism. Or maybe a better description is self-flagellation. The pain is there to let you know you are invested in something you really really want.

Ill end with one of my favorite pieces of wisdom on training:

It's not a secret, but it bears remembering: If you do not flirt with pain and exhaustion in your workouts you won't know what to do when they start a conversation with you on the field.
-HH

While this obviously applies to pushing through a grueling workout or drill, I think it also applies to throwing up in the middle of a set of 400s and getting a your legs a little bloody while deadlifting.

Or maybe I just need to better learn when to call it quits.

Loving Ultimate Right Now

There are good practices and bad practices and shitty practices and fun practices. And then there are those that make you really really happy to be on the team. Last night was one of those.

I wasn't playing particularly well and had some weird turnovers due to muscle fatigue (from the Crossfit Total I did an hour beforehand (new PR: 690lb). My team was not bad - we won our scrimmage - but we certainly were not good. The weather was nice, my new Speed TDs were fitting perfectly, I was running well, and our Guppies (new guys) were learning quickly and having fun. On top of this, our coaches showed me the list of guys they are considering for A team: its appropriately long and has all the guppies that I like. We ran a really simple but beautiful drill to teach cutting hard and making good throws when tired and I had the last goal of the night on a fast break bomb to one of those favorite guppies. Afterwords a different guppy threw down some meal points for my massive salad at the Dining Hall. Siting with 3 new guppies and 3 new Psychos (our girl's team), we recanted how cool the party I hosted was this weekend.


Moving on. I have big news: I will be going to Club Nationals in Sarasota to be an Observer! While I was thinking about future frisbee goals 2 weeks back, I decided that I want to be on a team that makes it to The Show - I guess if the Observers count as a team... well we all were the same uniform...

I am particularly excited because both the Men's (Streetgang) and Women's (Safari) San Diego teams made it which has not happened in a long while. I am really looking forward to hanging with these old friends and meeting new ones. I am also particularly excited because the UPA is picking up the tab.


Finally, I really must do a write-up of my Club experience this summer with the Bay Area's EndPhase, but for now: Thanks guys for a really fun time; I learned a lot and made a lot of great friends.

For now, keep enjoying disc.

PS- Carmalization torches are great for starting backyard bonfires mid-party.

New Alumni pt 3 Dibs

Mark “Dibs” Johnston is a great Squid. To my knowledge, no one else has been a captain two years in a row. While we have had Junior captains, none have remained captain in their last year. Dibs’ captaining style was calm, confident, and fun. I personally would have liked him to be more vocal and assertive because he had a great intuitive sense for spacing, io forehands, and D positioning. More importantly, he knew what he was good at and what he needed to stay away from. I feel like he was also one of, if not the single most, well rounded players of last year – he was great on any line, at any position with the throws to fit any situation and the read to catch any huck. He certainly led by example.

Interestingly, Dibs spent 5 years at UCSD but the Squids only got 4 years out of him and his first year playing he spent on our B team, “Lite”, where the play call was always a huck to him. In one sense, his play was very by-the-book and I think his beginnings on the B team where strategy is more basic had a hand in this. On the other hand, he threw the most beautiful cross field blade to my deep cut from my offside handler position at regionals, so he could obviously get creative at times.

One of the joys of playing with him was it was pretty easy to know what he wanted to throw. I could just stand on the breakside waiting for the inside forehand and he would get it there. The most memorable instance of this was in our DGP win vs Black Tide at Centex when he threw 5 IO flicks in a row to break through the cup upwind. They obviously knew it was coming but couldn’t stop it.

He shared Cork’s matter-of-factness (they lived together along with Duffy). Dibs was great at pointing out the absurd things the girl’s team was doing – of course we all saw those things, but the way Dibs phrased his pity always cracked me up.

One last thing: I have seen many unique throwing mannerisms, but none as consistent as his. When Dibs throws he always puffs out his cheeks like a chipmunk. Always.

Oct 3-4

This weekend is gonna be big is the Frisbee world. Lots of regional tournaments, lots of games-to-go.

Im about to fly off to Portland for NW Open Regionals and the weather doesn't look great which means its gonna be a crazy weekend with the potential for upsets.

Southwest Open Regionals is in Arizona and will feature the game I am most interested in besides my own. Strike Slip / Streetgang matchup will be epic. (Although I think Streetgang will show everyone whats up and take down Bravo for the 1st spot).

Im excited. Lets go EndPhase!

New Alumni pt 2 Cork

Continued from the last post - Saying goodbye to last years Alumni

Brooks "Cork" LeComte

Cork is a natural athlete. He doesn't seem to have to try very hard but is good at anything physical. I guess thats kinda the model for a good high school quarterback. I don't really think he was even that into frisbee until the middle of this year. Players like him make me wonder how awesome he would have been if he had tried hard the whole time.

This year, Cork was a monster on D. He has the best field sense of anyone on the team hands down which must come from playing football. If I had to put a label on him, it would be "snake in the grass". More poach D's than anyone, more "Holy Shit, Where Did That Come From?!?"s than anyone. He was good in the air, but the DOffense revolved around him as a handler. His hucks were not the touchy ones we O players dream about, but instead they were quick lazers that went really far (he also had more out-the-back hucks than anyone). These were perfect for our D receivers, Biel in particular. The DOffenses plan was for Cork to throw and receive every short pass or dish in the Vert stack until he found the right time to jack it deep (to Biel). I think Cork leaves the biggest hole to fill strategically in this upcoming year - we are going to have to totally rework the way the D scores its points.


More than his field sense, I was quite impressed with his view of the game, the way it is played, and his overall demeanor. I might describe him as serious or no-nonsense, but he is super funny and always down for drinking games (Which, like any other game, he is seemingly naturally good at. Playing Quarters with him on Spring Break was ridiculous.) Instead, I think the right description is "matter-of-fact". He is very good at seeing situations for what they really are. Games are for winning, parties are for having a good time, beer is for getting drunk, big games are for proving yourself, the silliness that is inherent in our sport is actually really silly. His humor is the same way - out of the blue he will make a comment, completely straight faced, that is totally true and observant but at the same time ridiculous.

One of the things that I liked most about him was his ability to question why things were done a certain way just because thats how they had been done before. We share the extreme dislike of practice drills that don't really mimic game time situations. One of the most insightful questions I've ever heard from Cork is this: "Why do girls play on the same sized field with the same sized disc as guys? Every other sport is modified in women's leagues to fit their bodies and skill levels, why not Ultimate?" We were running a warmup lap at Nationals and he causally made this observation and kept on running while I literally had to stop for a bit to think about how right he was.

I really like Cork; he is a great friend to be around and an amazing teammate to have because of of his field sense, athleticism, attitude, and humility.

New Alumni pt 2 Hutch

Continued from the last post - Saying goodbye to the new alumi.

Alec "Hutch" Miller

I’ve played more ultimate with Hutch than anyone else. We were the same incoming class and were both A-team freshmen. He was always naturally a receiver and I was always naturally a handler so he has caught a whole lot of my swill over the last four years.

Hutch was a baseball player in high school and a good one at that so he was always very competitive. One thing that I noticed from our first year was that he was always quicker at picking up the “right” way of doing things. He always ran the right cuts while “God Dammit Pumba!!” was practically our captain’s motto our freshman and sophomore years.

Since then, there isn’t one thing I could point to that he does amazingly, he just does everything well. His method of breaking the mark was pretty consistent: he would pivot really really really fast back and forth for 4 seconds until the mark was thrown off balance or committed high or low and then he would take the other – this aways seemed weird to me, but it worked well for him. Another thing that was unique about his play was the fact that he made a lot of difficult looking catches. I don’t know if this was because all the other receivers were 6’3’’ so our throws were meant for someone with 8 more inches of reach or because we were subconsciously trained to throw trash to him because we knew he would catch it our because he was just making it look hard in order to milk the glory. He was a solid player and that’s all there is to say about that – the last point of nationals vs NC State, 14-13 us, our coach wanted to put me on but I insisted that Hutch play and was 100% certain that we would score. We did, and the last thing I did in my 09 jersey was give him a high five.

I think that Hutch enjoyed college more than anyone on the team. He was a party animal, he genuinely loved his studies, he was an intellectual, he laughed constantly, and he was always down for…well… anything. He greatly enjoyed the people he surrounded himself with. I can’t believe it when I write it, but I have spent 4 spring breaks with him in rented houses on the Texas gulf coast, Jesus Coast as we called it. We have been to an uncountable number of parties together (I don’t think he missed one Ultimate party in his entire career). He was a motivational team leader.

While we didn’t hang out that much outside of a Frisbee setting, I consider him a close friend who I could call on if I was ever in the Tahoe area. He was a great teammate who cared deeply for the good of the team (knowing that sometimes the good of the team included shot gunning 16oz of malt liquor in a hotel bathtub).

4 years, 3 drinking holes, 2 Nationals appearances, 1 very soiled dorm floor.

Oh, and by the way, Best Facile Hair On The Team.

New Alumni pt 1

I am getting really excited about the upcoming year of college frisbee. I guess its because I'm having a great time with club - the good times I have with the End Phase guys remind me of all the good times with the guys I've chased at track practices for 3 years.

Before I get I get ahead of myself about next season ( it is only September), I would like to look at last season and say goodbye to the team mates who graduated last year.

Without further ado:


Anson "Duffy" Brune

Duffy is a year ahead of me so I always automatically thought he was legit but he certainly has earned that demarcation on his own. He was never the best player on the field but I can't really remember ever seeing him attempt something that was obviously outside his skill set. He was on the D line and was solid and consistent. The exception to this was as Sean Ryan this last year in Santa Cruz: The first game on Saturday vs Chico after a shitty night's sleep on dorm floors was our first of the Ice session and everyone was still groggy. Duffy, out of nowhere, gets a amazing layout D up high to prevent a zipping huck that surely would have been a score!
What a way to show the freshman we'd brought how to play D!

I think a large part of why he was good was his high pain tolerance gained from wrestling in HS. He was the opposite of the average tall and lanky ultimate player - shorter and husky, but he still managed to smoke most of the team at the track in old shitty cross trainers because he could endure the pain well.

In addition to going hard at the track, he goes harder than anyone at a party. He started a power hour on spring break at 5am. What the fuck? I remember one Saturday night of Santa Barbra Invite it was raining hard and while people were scrambling to take their sleeping bag and shit to wherever they were staying, he calmly strided through the flooded streets with a case of 40oz's of Cobra Malt Liquor on his head as his only possession - what else would he need?

(PS- His preferred method of celebrating anything, is picking people and things up and flipping them)













Yui "Yui" Takeshita
Yui was a transfer from Carlton-GOP and is studying at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography. UCSD is pretty lucky as we normally get 1 good transfer student on the A team a year (not as lucky as Stanford which seems to get 4/year). I'm sure it has to be hard to walk into a new situation and integrate well into a new team, especially when dealing with loads of school work, but Yui became a vital part of the team and a great friend as if he'd been here since freshman year.



I think it is really great to have a different perspective on Ultimate strategy, tactics, and team dynamics. He has a great throw and go, around flick and a tendency to bid really big. Some people think of Asians as natural lightweights but Yui is a heavyweight is everything he does. He slams beer with the same reckless abandon that he bids, he can almost out-eat me (Im 6'3", 200lb and didn't get the name Pumba for just one reason), and he works really hard at grad school to boot.



When we beat Tide in the game to go I was immediately overcome with exuberation, but with some time to reflect on the plane back to SD one of the many strong emotions I had was a overwhelming happiness for the ability to take Yui to nationals. As a member of Carlton-G.O.P. , he was peers with CUT guys but never got to share the fame - GOP will always be the "2nd" Carlton team. He truly earned this trip to Columbus this year and when he was able to joyfully celebrated with his longtime friends on CUT after their Championship win, I felt deep happiness that I could be part of the team that took him there. I consider him a great friend.




(You can see it in his eyes how much he loves his new teammates)




Up Next Time:
Cork
Hutch
Dibs

(Most photo credits go to the wonderful Amy "Meeko" Chang)

PS- NorCal Open Sectionals is this weekend in Davis and I am pumped to play everyone and get another shot at Jam and Revolver!

PPS- Why am I so bad at buying plane tickets? Is it really gonna cost me $350 to fly to Eugene for San Diego for Regionals on Oct 2? Fuck!

PPPS- I would like my blog to not look so much like puke - I think a design overhaul is in order