Ring Training: Ice Cream? Lawnmowers? Oh, and Nationals!
Wow, good day on the weblogs for great training ideas on the rings:
- Ringtraining.com: The Ice Cream Maker.
- Straight to the Bar: Scott Sonnon's Lawnmower Extension.
- Ice Chamber: Foot-Ring Push-up.
P.S. I'll try to post something about Nationals soon. Tourneys give me "hangovers" (not the alcohol kind) where I can't really focus or get motivated, and it's worse for Nationals. And I'm swamped at work. But hey, while we have this quiet moment, maybe this'll be my Nationals post...
Best fields I've ever played on, all the games matter and are hard fought (which is what makes the tourney so special, IMO), and incidentally they get great food vendors, particularly the étouffée and the crepes (mmmm... Nutella and banana filling...).
We underperformed, going 3-4 on the weekend and losing the 9-10 game to Boneyard. Gotta give those guys their due, they took it to us, and their D was both the cleanest AND the most intense we saw all tourney. Losing sucks, but getting beat by clean, hard-nosed D is a pleasure compared with losing to a team whose D is supplemented by grabbing, hacking, the ol' stop-the-continuation-throw bump/tackle, etc. Anyway, nice game, Boneyard!
Interesting situation on Friday, playing our last two pool play games. We were tied with Miami and played them in what we assumed would be the game to advance to quarters, as they had perennial contender Old and In the Way in their final game. Tough game, but we pulled it out. Surprisingly though, Miami rolled Old, and we lost to Big Sky. Can't blame Old for conserving for quarters, and our fate was in our own hands, so no complaints, but it stung nonetheless.
Personally, I had pretty good tourney. Thursday was great. Handful of blocks, no errors. Friday was marred by a couple drops behind the disc in our loss to Big Sky. Saturday was somewhere between the two.
By the way, I was THRILLED to see a few of my old Salt teammates take home the title with DoG! Loved watching that game. Not as much as I would have loved playing in it, but still great vicarious Ultimate, and I couldn't be happier for those guys. If you're reading, congrats DoG!
Update: Speaking of DoG, Jim Parinella's writeup is a fun read, and covers their pool in much more depth than I covered ours.
(The extent of my pool play coverage being an oblique reference to how chippy some of our games were. I should add that while those games were no fun to play, I don't think it made the difference in any outcomes, and it takes two to tango.)