Brodie Smith’s Frisbee Trick Shots.

Nice, this fantastic catch by Andrew Fleming made SportsCenter.

This is easily the best Ultimate Frisbee highlight reel I’ve seen, all clips collected from 2007 Nationals. (via catch)

I weaned myself off Ibuprofin as a pre-game ritual. Good thing, it turns out, as it looks like it does more harm than good.

If you read rec.sport.disc via Google Groups or some other spam-laden interface, I worked up an alternative with Yahoo Pipes. Here is a spam-filtered pipe of new RSD topics, and here is a spam-filtered pipe of all RSD messages.

Both those pages include various other subscription options, including RSS, e-mail, and others. Clicking any headline will bring you to the post in Google Groups, where you can read as usual. If there are certain authors you want to filter out you can use my Toadless script.

Another cool thing—and this is key—look for the “Clone” link on the filtered results above. This feature allows you to make your own version of the pipe (it has a nice, non-technical interface) should you want to filter out particular authors, or if the spammers change habits and stuff starts sneaking through. You can customize it to fit your own needs, and then use your cloned pipe instead of mine.

So far, the above plus Toadless pretty much fixes RSD for my purposes.

P.S. What you REALLY want is to subscribe to the pipes above using a newsreader. They are great for keeping up with various Ultimate weblogs and RSD at the same time (and any other sites that offer newsfeeds, for that matter). Google Reader is a great one, here’s a little intro from Google.

If you read rec.sport.disc via Google Groups, which lacks a killfile that you’d get with a dedicated usenet reader, and wish you could see less of Toad, I wrote a little script that hides his posts. You have to use Firefox with the Greasemonkey extension installed. If you are, click (toadless.user.js) to install my script, and it will hide Toad’s posts when you view a thread. Actually, it replaces them with an innocuous little placeholder, like so:

Also, you can pretty easily update it to hide posts from any user that you don’t want to read anymore. To do that, right-click the monkey in the lower-right corner of Firefox, and go to “Manage User Scripts” -> Toadless -> Edit. Scroll down to line 50 and follow the instructions there.

You might want to also check out my RSD spam workaround. Between this and that, RSD is readable to me again.

UPDATE 7/21/09: The script looks a little different from the example above, but the idea remains the same. It now plays nicer with Google’s expand/collapse code, and you can click any hidden post to reveal it, on the off-chance you need/want the context.

I remember, quite a few years ago now, watching DoG play at Regionals. I still remember Billy Rodriguez exhorting a defender from the sidelines, "where do you want to make him go?"

As one who was (and still is, if I let my mind wander) inclined to play defense by merely chasing my guy around, this was revelatory. "Where do I want to make him go"?! What a concept!

Now, years later, Josh Mullen has put up a post laying out how that works in practical terms: Good Defense Happens BEFORE the Disc Moves. Perhaps not as pithy as "where do you want to make him go", but much more helpful.

Sorry about the dearth of posts, I'm in a bit of a transition period...

First, a link: Mackey has a great post on squatting up. Go. Read. Watch THE CLIP.

Second, to the Nationals-bound Ultimate players out there, good luck in Sarasota! Wish I could be there, but now I get to join in the trick-or-treat fun. As my daughter told me going into Regionals, "it's a win-win!" And right she was.

Finally, do me a favor? Drop me a line if you find this site useful. You can post here or e-mail me. I'm handing over my oldest, dearest site to a fellow ready to give it a long overdue update, and this site piggybacks on it's framework, so will have to change one way or another. Anyway, I've always been curious about who my readers actually are, so if you're willing (no pressure, of course), just a quick ping: your sport, your team (if applicable), and what you've picked up from here. Thanks!

Another great issue of The Huddle is up, this one on footwork. Here's a basic thing from Chris Talarico's entry that struck me:

As for individual footwork "moves," one that can help make cuts sharper is planting off your inside foot instead of your outside foot (or a cross-over step). For example, say you're setting up a cut to the left by heading to your right. When you're ready to change direction, the typical move is to jab your right foot out to plant and push off to the left. Try this instead: place your last step with your left foot under your center of gravity, or more to the right of where it would land if you were running straight ahead. Rotate your hips hard to the left, and swing your right leg around to make your next step roughly 90 degrees from your original path. It will also help to get low and dip your left shoulder as you make the move. You should see that this will allow you to change direction quicker than with a jab step.

I can't believe this has never occurred to me. I've always been a "plant-and-push off the outside foot" guy. You'd think all those years of cleats blown on the outside seam would have been a tip-off.

Anyway, I had to take this idea for a test drive. I laced up my cleats, warmed up, and ran a three-cone drill my old way. Scored my usual pathetic time. Then I ran it the new way and took off a half-second. On my first try. While actually having to *think* about where to put my feet. Cool.

So I went back and read my old turning post, and rewatched the Jackie Battle combine YouTube video, replaying his three-cone bit over and over. Sure enough, his turns drive entirely off the inner foot. It really looks like his outer foot just taps down. I should have noticed that earlier.

I guess I'm running a real fitness blog now, promising to reveal "secrets". The shame. Anyway, another Ultimate post. The conditioning stuff should be of interest to everybody, at least, so I'll mention that first:

Awesome new Ultimate resource The Huddle just posted a feature: Training For Ultimate. Lots of good stuff there, including a little bit of nostalgia seeing Tully Beatty contributing. Used to lose to his team routinely way back in college. Class act, that guy (and his post is excellent).

As for forehands, I've thought a lot about Idris Nolan's flick advice off and on for awhile. Not so much for myself; as a 20-year split-finger thrower, it's too late for me unless I take a season off to rebuild my grip, and I might not have that many seasons left! More for my daughter, who's 10, and just starting to show an interest. I'd like to teach her right.

So I e-mailed Idris, and he kindly shared more thoughts with me on the subject. In the end, it's pretty much as he described, as counter-intuitive as that may be for we split-finger throwers. For the throwing action, picture delivering a karate chop to pretty low on somebody's midsection (your palm would be up, your forearm/wrist/hand all in a line).

But if a picture is worth a 1,000 words a video's worth a million, and Matt Mackey provides it. The revelation, for me, comes at 1:40, "these two fingers almost become superfluous". Superfluous?! Stunning, as my flick depends on those very fingers. This explains, finally, why my flick suffers so mightily in the rain, while others are barely affected. Give it a try. Very interesting. Those fingers still play a role, but it's definitely a supporting role rather than the lead.

P.S. Okay, so you don't want to rebuild your grip, and the wet (either sweat or rain) still messes with you. Here are the best (by far) solutions I've found in my 20 years:

• For sweat: wristbands and Tite-Grip.
• For rain: forget football gloves, Ansell Hyflex Machinist's Gloves (for handling small oily parts!) are the closest thing you'll find to a bare hands feel even in driving rain. And at three bucks (!) a pair, you have nothing to lose but your pride.

UltiVillage has a great Clip of the Day up: Chase in 04 Finals. A colossal effort to get over a guy making a merely great effort.

I try to keep this more of a fitness blog than an Ultimate blog, even if it is my sport of choice. While the post, Ultimate, Refs, and the Fallacy of Objectivity is ostensibly about refs in Ultimate, I thought it was an excellent meditation on sportsmanship in general, and would have some appeal outside my little niche sport. An excerpt:

Like all sports, even team sports, Ultimate fundamentally comes down to a competition with the self. Opposing teams provide a foil against which to test oneself, and maybe the memory of being beaten by other players contributes to your motivation while training, but really, sports are about struggling to facilitate the emergence of your best, at the right time. The level of one's play comes from within; while the presence of the other team challenges a player in new ways, the idea of beating the other team and the externality of that goal is secondary to the ascendancy of your own strength. When teams win championships, they're celebrating their own victories, not the other teams' defeats. It's an important distinction.

UltiVillage recently posted a trailer for the 2007 Emerald City Classic. It features tons of great clips, and it really wants to be available in a higher resolution, but hey, beggars can't be choosers.

Speaking of UltiVillage, I don't know what they pay for bandwidth now, but it occurs to me that at least for the Clip of the Day and trailers they could get a SmugMug account and store hi-res video clips there (check the quality of that demo video, would only cost them $60/year to host 2.5 minute clips, $150/year to host 5 minute clips). I've also wondered about them moving to some kind of pay-per-view model for UltiTV. I assume the UltiTV clips are the same low resolution, but a pay-per-view model would allow users to choose to only watch the clips they want to see, and to pay more to watch them in higher resolution. Bandwidth costs would be a concern, obviously, along with managing the payments, but Amazon has some tantalizing web services available that are really perfect for this kind of application. I'm pretty far afield from a fitness post now, so you can stop reading if you want, but here are the services that UltiVillage could use:

First, for storing the videos online there's Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3):

Amazon S3 provides a simple web services interface that can be used to store and retrieve any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere on the web. It gives any developer access to the same highly scalable, reliable, fast, inexpensive data storage infrastructure that Amazon uses to run its own global network of web sites. The service aims to maximize benefits of scale and to pass those benefits on to developers (write, read, and delete objects containing from 1 byte to 5 gigabytes of data each. The number of objects you can store is unlimited).

The thing that really makes this shine is the pricing, which is practically tailor-made for pay-per-view:

Storage
$0.15 per GB-Month of storage used

Data Transfer
$0.10 per GB - all data transfer in
$0.18 per GB - first 10 TB / month data transfer out
$0.16 per GB - next 40 TB / month data transfer out
$0.13 per GB - data transfer out / month over 50 TB

Requests
$0.01 per 1,000 PUT or LIST requests
$0.01 per 10,000 GET and all other requests*
* No charge for delete requests

So lets say UltiVillage wanted to store a full DVD's worth of video online (a bit less than 5GB for a single-sided, single-layer disc, but we'll round up to 5GB for these back-of-the-envelope calculations). Nice, high-res stuff. It would cost $0.50 to copy the data into S3, and $0.75/month to store it. It would cost $0.90 for a user to download it (assuming they watched the whole thing, at high resolution). So suppose it's up for a year, 100 people watch it, and you charge $2.00 per view. UltiVillage costs are a one-time upload of $0.50, $9.00 to host it for a year, and $90 for it to be downloaded 100 times, for a total of $99.50. They collect $200 for a profit of $100.50. Of course, the numbers would change if they offered several resoutions to choose from; users could choose to pay more/less depending on what resolution they wanted to download.

Now, I'm not a businessman, and I have no idea if $2 would be a good price point for them. There's salaries, cameras, film, and all the other costs that come with running the business. I have no idea how many customers they have, whether those customers would prefer a pay-per-view model, and how much people would pay. Finally, I have no idea how this might affect their DVD sales. But speaking for myself, I'm not an UltiTV subscriber currently because I don't like the low-res QuickTime files, and I'm only interested in a few of the videos they offer. But I'd definitely do pay-per-view for higher resolution versions. How much would I pay? Not sure. I'd probably put $20 into an account and then pick and choose a few high-res games to watch, hopefully at somewhere between $2 and $5 a pop. Totally off the cuff, but that's the ballpark.

The other piece of this would be managing the pay-per-view accounts/payments. For that there's Amazon Flexible Payment Service (FPS). It's in limited beta now, but it looks promising (and you could always see about getting in on the beta). Pricing (which obviously affects the estimates above):

For Transactions >= $10:
1.5% + $0.01 for Amazon Payments balance transfers
2.0% + $0.05 for bank account debits
2.9% + $0.30 for credit card

For Transactions < $10:
1.5% + $0.01 for Amazon Payments balance transfers
2.0% + $0.05 for bank account debits
5.0% + $0.05 for credit card

For Amazon Payments balance transfers < $0.05:
20% of the transaction amount, with a minimum fee of $0.0025

It could be done! The question of whether it should be done is one for the bean counters. I'd sure like it, though.

(Oh, it would be nice, while we're at it, if the UltiVillage site had some social networking components built in. Perhaps allow paying customers to rate the videos so others know how to best spend their pay-per-view money, maybe a forum so videos can be discussed, allow users to upload commentary tracks that synchronize with the video, etc. I mean, as long as I'm musing about somebody else's business model...)

(The piracy issue is a whole 'nother can of worms. I don't know how much sharing/stealing of UltiTV videos happens now: one guy on the team gets an account, downloads the videos, passes them around. I'm sure it happens. Heck, DVDs can be ripped and the high-res files shared, for that matter. Not sure how high-res pay-per-view changes this behavior, or again, how that would affect DVD sales. If it makes it worse, hopefully it is offset by new customers like me, who don't subscribe to UltiTV because of the low-res, and don't buy the DVDs because I only want to watch them once, not over and over.)

Let me get the reflection out of the way. Four years ago after letting my game languish and decay, I decided I was going to get it back. My goal each season was to play better than the year before. I did that three years in a row, but this year broke the streak. Ah well, it makes it that much easier to meet my goal next year.

Anyway, it was a weird year for a lot of reasons, but the only one relevant to this weblog is that I didn't really adjust my training to more difficult time constraints and stresses as well as I could have. Started the season injured, and never really made up the ground physically or, more importantly, psychologically.

So, after some noodling around, I do believe I have the next couple months of my off-season mapped out (PDF) (update: see below for revised version). Sorry if the notation is kinda terse, it started out as a cheatsheet for myself, but then as I realized I was going to post it I tried to flesh it out while still keeping it to a single page. Feel free to post questions.

A few ideas/influences I kept in mind when designing this:

• All workouts should be doable in 30 minutes or less.
• Thought I'd try the "3 days on, 1 day off" cycle favored by Crossfit.
• This Waterbury article for strength.
• Lots of Ross Enamait influence.
• More and better leg work, deducing much from the Kelly Baggett articles here. In particular, this one.

I did the "Deck #6" workout yesterday morning as a bit of prepaid gluttony penance, and it was great. I mean, I sucked at it, leaving cards in the hole after I hit the 30 minute wall, but still, I'm going to like this plan. I think I'll run through it twice and then change it up a bit.

UPDATE: After a pass through, I've tweaked the program a bit with some of my own ideas and some of Noel's. See below for his great comments. Noel, I wanted to change the exercise order to line up more with your suggestions, but found I ended up ordering largely due to time efficiency (mini-circuits timed largely based on whether you're working both sides simultaneously or not for a given exercise). Anyway, here's version 1.2 in PDF and Word formats (the latter for those who want to do their own tweaking).

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.)

Usually the way pickup goes is this: first four players ready play box. The next two ready join in. Whoever shows up after that sets up Goaltimate and we play that. If we get up to 12, the late arrivals set up Ultimate. Used to be we'd just wait to have numbers for Ultimate before we'd do anything, and that would drive me nuts. Now getting there early just means you get to have more fun, and the latecomers do the work for you.

Anyway, we had a situation recently where we only had three ready to play so I started thinking about the three-person basketball game "cutthroat" and how you could do that with box. Here's what I cooked up:

• Somebody starts with the disc. They throw it to somebody. The thrower and the receiver are now on O, the other player is on D, and the disc is now clear (the O can score on their next pass). If they score, the O players each get a point. If they don't, the D player gets 2 points. Make it take it, play on immediately.
• On a turn, the D picks it up and throws it to somebody. Thrower and receiver are on O, disc is now clear, etc., same as above.
• If the very first pass of a possession (where the thrower is picking somebody to play O with) is incomplete then anybody can pick it up. If nobody wants to pick it up, it goes back to the thrower. No score, no penalty, try again.
• Stall is to three.
• Keep your own score, and call it out every time you get points. If you don't call it out, it doesn't count.
• First player to 11 wins.

The test drive of this game was a roaring success. Very fast-paced, couldn't stop laughing. Looking forward to the next time we only have three to start.

Oh, I didn't include it above because it's an unnecessary complication, but it grew kinda naturally out of our regular house rules, which I love. In our regular game, there is a fast break rule: if the defense catches it, there's no need to clear the disc, you can score on your very next pass. You can even throw such a pass from inside the box to another player in the box for the score (no Callahans). The way this manifests in cutthroat is that if the defense catches the disc, the very next pass can score. In effect, the thrower can choose who they want to give a point to. The game is already pretty funny during the transition, as the potential receivers try to make themselves desirable targets, while at the same time trying not to be woefully out of position in case the thrower goes to the other player instead. Making the transition throw a scoring opportunity in these cases turns the subtle jockeying into shameless pandering while still trying to protect against the back-stab.

Try it, you'll like it!

Apologies in advance for the brevity of this update. NE Masters Regionals, five teams, two bids. DoG (Boston), Tombstone (Toronto), and Above and Beyond (us, NY) look pretty well matched on paper. We have a rocky Saturday. Very hot. We beat Mt. Crushmore handily (15-4), but Not Dead Yet gives us a game (15-10), and we lose the big games to DoG (15-11) and Tombstone (14-10). Our D looked good, our O not so much. Lots of chances, few conversions. So that sets up the DoG/Tombstone final, with us playing Not Dead Yet in the backdoor bracket.

Sunday, cool and drizzly. DoG handles Tombstone. As expected, decent first half, but then Tombstone (I hear) starts looking towards seeing us in the backdoor game-to-go, and conserves. DoG rolls, 15-7. They look good. I'm always amazed at how they create space, both as individuals and as a team. We do a much better job with Not Dead Yet, winning 15-3. The offense starts to click, and we're running a pretty deep rotation with hard running D. We carry that energy and improved offensive efficiency into the back door game-to-go and take it! 15-11. Tough game, pretty contentious, but we're heading to FL, woo-hoo!

(There is an interesting discussion happening on RSD right now concerning the fairness of the five-team, two-advance format. Pretty common format in masters this year, and quite a few of the 2-3 matchups went one way in pool play, and then the other way in elimination play.)

Big bonus: after we qualified, we got to watch Jenn (one of our Berkshire locals) qualify with Bashing Pinatas! This got me all mushy over all the Nationals qualifiers who have played at least a season with our long-standing little hole-in-the-wall pickup game. Here's the list:

• Alec E.
• Blake H.
• Chris M. ²
• Christine L. ¹
• Derk P. ^1,2
• Jenn F. ²
• Jim B. ¹
• Jon B.
• Josh B. ^1,2
• Josh M. ^1,2
• Lester B. ^1,2
• Sam R. ²
• Steve H. ^1,2
• Xavier L. ^1,2

¹ First contact with the game was with Berkshire.
² Bulk of/most significant experience was with Berkshire.

Also, Rachel D. is knocking on the door with Nemesis (women's midwest team). They had two games-to-go this year, and lost a close one in the finals, and then the backdoor game in crappy weather to a team they'd beaten the day before. Damn! Next year, she promises.

Not bad, especially considering there are only something like 130,000 people in the entire county!

UltiVillage has a clip of Andrew Lugsdin making an impressive second effort after tipping the disc. Two things struck me:

1. He never slows, recognizing instantly (and crucially) that he still has a play.
2. I used to match up with that guy at Ow My Knee and No Borders back in the early nineties (he was better than me by some margin then, even before our career arcs diverged). All these years later, and he's still a total stud. Inspiring.

I previous posted a bit on our local box variant, and I've further refined it to incorporate the 1-pass-to-clear rule the Boston guys like:

...there still isn't a better warmup for an ultimate game than playing a good game of 3-3 or 4-4 hot box. And just to clarify for everyone, a goal requires TWO feet in the box, not one. We now play that to clear the disc only requires one pass away from the goal, so you can have two people literally play catch in and out of the goal to score multiple points in a row. It makes the game VERY fast-paced and exciting, requiring a lot more effort on the turnover to get back and cover the box because of the quick strike offense.

The wrinkle, and I really like this, is that if the defense catches it they can forgo the clear and score immediately. It's a great opportunity, as you generally catch the opposition all on the wrong sides of their men.

We still play one foot in to score, though.

I just realized Seigs brought his weblog back, so I spent a bit of time catching up on my reading. Good stuff. His recent posts on training, particularly as it relates to Ultimate tournaments, match up nicely with a lot of my own beliefs on the subject:

• Track Workouts
• How Do You Train for 8 Games in One Weekend?
• Training for Tournaments Part 2

Read the comments too. In particular, Dusty Rhodes' thoughts on the subject are always interesting.

Anybody out there play Goaltimate with Callahan goals in effect? We've adopted that rule here, and it feels like an improvement. If nothing else, it cuts down on the stupidity Goaltimate seems to bring out in even the most conservative Ultimate players. :-)

Two very good reads came across my desktop this week. First up is Purposeful Walking by Jim Parinella. It's Ultimate-specific, but I think has cross-sport value, as we all need to manipulate our opponents one way or another. Next up is Turning It, a very interesting read on the importance of training turning, acceleration, and lateral power rather than straight-line speed. Again, sport-specific (football), but with broad applicability (Ultimate players, depending on role, have more opportunities to get up to top speed, so don't neglect that part of your training, though).

I played Easterns with Above & Beyond last weekend, had a great time, and signed on for the season, along with a few other ex-KooB/Salt guys. Lost in the finals, but the future looks bright. Briefly, a tourney recap.

First, pool play Saturday. Very hot and humid.

Round 1, Mount Crushmore: Always in control of this one. 15-5.

Round 2, DC Funk: Took half 8-3 and then they clawed back. We gutted it out for the 15-13 win. Guys cramping while Big Ego watched, as they had dispatched Mt. Crushmore in short order.

Round 3, Big Ego: Good game, went up 3-1, then went down 2. Tied. Went down two and then tied three more times over the course of the game. Lost 15-14 at the cap.

Saturday night. Dehydrated, fighting off waves of nausea until like 10PM. Forcing dinner down was a chore.

Sunday, cool and with a hint of mist in the air. Refreshing.

Semis, DC Funk: We turned up the defensive intensity and that helped a lot, I thought. Up 8-2 at half. They again turned in a better second half, but didn't threaten like they did on Saturday. 14-8 final score, maybe?

Finals, Big Ego: Again, went up initially and then they came back. We were down 11-7 at one point. Came back to 13-12, lost 15-13.

Personally, again briefly, it might just be the Advil talking, but my various injuries didn't affect me quite as much as they did at WMO, I'm not as sore as I thought I'd be, and got some revenge on The Black Rings Workout yesterday (finished it this time, with times of 0:50, 0:47, 0:45, 0:47, and 0:44), so I'm just going to ignore them from now on. And while I'm not out of my slump yet (mostly did no harm, had a good semis but a poor finals, including a horrific drop), I can finally see the path to a strong season before me, so I'm no longer worried about it.

Oh, a first: I had ex-teammates on every team in the division. Awesome.

Masters Easterns is this weekend, and KooB is not bringing a team. Instead, small groups of us are playing for different teams (some with Big Ego, some with Above and Beyond, some with Mt. Crushmore). Thought I'd share with you the training advice I gave two of my friends (and now opponents) playing for Big Ego:

As you know, I read quite a bit on fitness and training, and over the past week or so I've had several revelations which have completely overturned many of my beliefs. Here's the very latest on what you should be doing:

1. High-intensity interval work is out. As tournaments are all-day, all-weekend affairs, you really want to train like a marathon runner. Lots of very long, moderately paced runs. 20 miles or more. On pavement is best, as grass will then feel like heaven. Pavement is to grass as Krypton is to Earth.
2. Sugar, sugar, sugar. Remember, it's all about the tournaments, and what do you eat on game day? Right, glucose and simple carbs, so you want your body tuned to that kind of diet. Ice cream is good, but donuts are better. If you eat them until you are slightly nauseated you will get a nice overcompensation effect when you eat more reasonable portions on tourney days. Oh, donuts on tourney days? Absolutely. Boston Cream for you two, obviously.
3. Burpees are out. It is a movement you never perform in Ultimate, so has no carry-over value. The time would be better spent tacking a few more miles onto your long runs, which you should be doing 5 to 7 days per week (double that if you run on grass).
4. If you're lifting weights, for goodness sake, STOP! Without years of coaching your form will be terrible, and you'll be doing more harm than good. It's a miracle you haven't had a season-ending injury already.
5. Television is a great way to clear your head, focus on the upcoming tourney and, as a bonus, it'll make the eating of the donuts just fly right by. Watch as much of it as possible. If it helps, you can treat television as a reward: "okay, one more hour of TV, but ONLY if I can keep three more donuts down."
6. Tying it all together, consider investing in a treadmill, as it would allow you to perform the Holy Trinity of Fitness: long, slow-paced exercise, TV, and donut consumption ALL AT THE SAME TIME! Don't let the expense scare you away from this phenomenal training device; since you won't be sprinting on it (indeed, sprinting of any kind is anathema), you can buy the cheapest treadmill on the market.
7. Finally, time spent sleeping is time not spent running slowly (walking is good too), eating sugar, and watching television. Try not to sleep more than four hours per night. Handy tip: keep the treadmill, television, and donuts in the bedroom. Over time you will associate the bedroom with these activities rather than sleeping.

Good luck with your training!

:-)

Should be a fun weekend, and a possible first for me: if the DC team brings players from my era, I'll likely have former teammates on every team in the division.

Ugh. This one, unfortunately, is easy to write up:

• Lost 'em all. Pool play losses: half-of-Boston, Big Ego, Bro White, and Chuck Wagon. Play-in loss: New Noise. That bounced us down to the open div. bracket, but our opponents didn't show (Dartmouth Alums) so we called it a day. A few of us stuck around and ended up picking up with Big Ego for their consolation game (they were down to 9 players and had just lost a close one in the quarters). Lost that one too, to GLUM.
• Personally, worst tournament ever (no hyperbole). I've had bad games, I've even had bad days, but never before have I had an entire bad tournament. Every game on Saturday was disastrous. I was relatively pleased with my Sunday play against New Noise, and I was point-blocked twice in that game! That should give you some idea of how poorly things went for me.

On the team front, attrition hurt. Thought we were going to have 14 players, but two of our best athletes had to cancel at the last minute. Apparently it doesn't pay to be among our best athletes, as we lost two more of them over the course of Saturday (one early, one late). Then one of our top handlers by halftime of the play-in game on Sunday, leaving us with nine.

As for my abysmal performance, lots of factors. I've been struggling with a groin pull, and haven't been playing in an attempt to get it healthy. I've probably played five times since the fall, and I'm simply not one of those players who can get away with that. Time to ignore the groin and get on the field more often. Also, my mental game was atrocious. I don't think I made a single play (even routine catches or throws) where some part of my brain (sometimes a large part) wasn't thinking "okay, don't screw this up." You know what that leads to.

Actually, what it leads to is this: for the Chuck Wagon game one of our more sadistic players hit on the idea of having to play in your spandex underlayer with your shirt tucked in for a point if you screwed up. I ended up doing the honors pretty damn early. Kinda helped, in a "rose goes in the front, big guy" kind of way.

Finally, this is probably old news, but this weekend I heard that Jeff Graham tore his ACL. Such news is always bad, but in his case it made me particularly, inexplicably sad. "Inexplicably" because I've never met the guy, I've only seen him play. But he's obviously in tremendous shape, is so much fun to watch, and clearly takes great joy in the game. Also, by all accounts, he's one of the nicest guys around. ACL tears are just so random. One minute you're on top of the world, then you land a bit funny, and your season's over. It doesn't matter how hard you work, or what kind of shape you're in. Intelligent Design my ass. Sigh. Anyway, here's to Jeff's speedy recovery.

The folks at UltiVillage have put together a 2006 World Ultimate Club Championship trailer, which features a ton of excellent highlights (it took place in Australia, if you're wondering about that intro).

Google just launched My Maps, which provides a nice interface for creating your own custom maps with shapes, placemarks, etc. Idris posted the idea of using this as a tool for creating field maps.

Cool idea, I'm going to do this for our various pickup locations. I just played with this for five minutes, and it's really nice. You can draw fields. You can stick in placemarks, which users can click on to get the "directions to here" command. One thing: when you share the link, make sure you use the "Link to this Page" link. If you use your "My Maps" link then stuff like the Zoom and View (map, satellite, or hybrid) are not shared with the user, and the tool just zooms in as close as possible while still displaying all your custom objects (which is no good around here, since we live in the sticks and Google doesn't have imagery at that resolution).

Anyway, here's the result of my five minutes of fiddling.

About a week ago I whined about being in a rut, and I received some nice supportive messages in response. The first one was from Dusty Rhodes, and suggested (among other things) doing a few workouts with a training partner. I figured I'd take his advice today, without letting my complete and utter lack of a training partner stop me. So I piggy-backed on today's Pike Workout (click through for exercise descriptions in the comments):

This was a challenge. The idea is to do it as quickly as you can:

Get a Deck of Cards.

Shuffle them.

Spades: Burpees
Clubs: Mahlers
Hearts: Pushups
Diamonds: Squats

2-9 = Face Value
10-K = 10
A = 15

Go through as quickly as you can and keep time. My time was 28:09.

So that gave me something to shoot for, but I fell short, finishing in 30:09, and I took advantage of the optional Mahler substitution (two-count Mountain Climbers), which has gotta be miles easier (or at least tons faster). Dang. Overshooting 30:00 by a mere nine seconds particularly rankles. Surely I could have gutted out another ten seconds somewhere in there?! Still, the training partner who had no idea he was my training partner certainly helped me push myself. With about a quarter of the deck to go I really wanted to quit, but since I swore to myself I'd post the results I couldn't bear the thought of reporting "failed to finish."

A few days ago a fellow named Dusty Rhodes posted some advice on my Jumping Out of a Rut post. Today I happened to notice another comment by him on a different Ultimate weblog, and I followed that back to his weblog, which is excellent. My only excuse for missing it to date is that it's not on Ultimate Talk, as far as I know. It's enjoyable to read, and he seems to track many of the same sources I do (and, as a bonus, he's posting more regularly than I've been lately). He's even a fellow Never Gymless fan. And here I thought (self-centeredly) that I was pretty much the only Ultimate player to have discovered Ross Enamait and his books!

I went to the Ultimate Coaches and Players Conference with my Dad yesterday, and it was fun and informative. I just wanted to share a few notes from the presentations I attended:

Keynote: Ultimate Mental Toughness by Dr. Alan Goldberg

Dr. Goldberg is a nationally known sport psychologist, and well worth catching if you ever have the opportunity. Very entertaining and informative talk, with lots of nice examples that physically underscored his points for the whole audience (one of his central ideas—no doubt correct—is that what goes on in your mind creates actual physiological changes in your body that directly affect performance). I was particularly struck by the Mark Spitz quote he invoked early on, which I'll paraphrase:

Going fast in practice is 90% physical and 10% mental. You have to put in the work to be great. But in competition the ratio inverts. Competition is 90% mental and 10% physical.

Unfortunately I can say from experience that Dr. Goldberg did a really nice job putting into words what it feels like—and what goes through your head—when you choke. It's all about focusing on the right things. Along those lines, he stressed that everybody loses focus. The trick, and the thing to train, is immediately recognizing when the loss of focus occurs and bringing yourself back. He then illustrated how hard this can be by making us do something seemingly easy. Close your eyes, breath regularly, focusing on your diaphram on the inhale, and the word "one" on the exhale. Every time you lose focus, increment the number. So the first time you are distracted you bump up to "two". We got started, no problem at the start, but then he started talking, drumming, etc. and I got up to like 25 before I was too distracted to bring my focus back at all. He then suggested a simple drill. Do the same thing with a disc in front of you, concentrate on your diaphram on the inhale, and some word on the exhale ("now", perhaps). Get the hang of that. Then put the disc on top of your TV and turn the TV on. Learn the feeling of losing focus, and retrieving it.

Anyway, I have improved two things over the past few years: my conditioning and my focus. But I've put much more effort into the conditioning. Can it really be something as simple as this could help me continue to improve?

Perhaps. It all reminded me of Sectionals last year: I was tapped to help call subs, something I find mentally and emotionally draining. My play went completely to pieces. Multiple multi-turnover points. Fortunately our captain recognized this, and relieved me after one game. But that game was agonizing. The mind feeds the body, for sure.

Marking Techniques & Strategies by Ben Wiggins

Good stuff. Lots of individual and team tactics and strategies. From my notes:

• Get in shape. You can't mark if you're not in shape.
• Instead of marking in the typical feet-parallel crouch, he suggested marking with your feet a bit staggered so you can more quickly change the distance from the thrower. Helps against throwers skilled at drawing the foul. I imagine this will be even more important when the 11th edition goes live.
• Keep your head up instead of leaning in looking down at the disc. Better vision, harder for the thrower to draw the foul.
• Discussed the concept of "blocking back". When you go for the hand block, instead of up (since your hands should always be under the disc) and in towards the throwers hand, block up and away to minimize the chance of fouling. Ben emphasized not fouling, both for pragmatic and ethical reasons.
• Oftentime emphasize "winning the first second", even on the live side. So mark to stop the continuation before settling into the force.
• His diagrams belied (thankfully) something you hear commonly: namely that the mark takes away a third (or a half!) of the field. Against good throwers it's really a pretty narrow band.
• I liked his description of a team defense you might employ against a team that relies on the huck. He called it "rising pressure" and the basic idea is that the marker sets up with his butt pointed towards the back cone on the closed side. When the O is far away from the endzone (or the disc is close to the closed side), this will make the mark flatter. As the disc gets closer to the endzone (and the huck thus disappears), the mark angles more sharply (but still flattens when the disc is on the closed site). So simple. Can't believe this is the first I'd heard of it.
• In terms of substitutions, Ben noted as tourneys progress D teams tend to put more of their guys who are getting blocks on the field, until eventually they are fielding D lines with all blockers, and no markers. A mistake, he says.

Fitness and Training for Ultimate by Bryan Doo & Dan Cogan-Drew

Also good stuff. Bryan Doo did most of the talking, with Dan Cogan-Drew jumping in from time to time. Even though readers of this weblog are likely to be most interested in this presentation, I don't have too much to say, largely 'cause I agree with it all. Nice emphasis on the hamstrings, glutes, and hips, and rotational power/stability. From Bryan's examples and build, he's clearly a very fit guy with fantastic body control. A couple small but important things I took away though:

• I really liked the look of the "spiderman stretch", where you get into a pushup position, then bring your left foot to the outside of your left hand (you can drop your right knee down if it helps you get into this position, then try to straighten it out to activate the stretch). It seems to hit just about everything.
• Bryan also discussed the importance of glute activation in exercises where you don't necessarily think it's going to matter. As an example, he had a volunteer come to the stage and perform a bodyweight squat. Then he had the volunteer put one of these mini-bands around his knees which tended to pull them together. He had the volunteer resume a shoulder-width stance (thus stretching the band) and squat, and his form improved! The effect persisted after the band was removed. Funny, just a few days ago I was reading this interview with Pavel Tsatsouline where he had the interviewer do a hand-squeeze test normally, and then again with glutes activated. I recently discovered that it makes a difference when you're trying dragon flags as well (oh, as long as we're on the subject, two more T-Nation articles: Get Your Butt In Gear! (and Part II)

I wish this presentation had been a day rather than an hour. There are simply too many fitness attributes, exercises, and routines applicable to Ultimate to cover in an hour. I could've asked a million questions. Oh well, next time.

Real-Time Decision Making in Ultimate by Jim Parinella

Yet again, good stuff. Sadly my coverage is getting spottier the further I go. In this case it was because Jim's talk was the most "had to be there" of the bunch. I would probably also argue that of the presentations I saw, his was the most ambitious topic. Really what it boiled down to was an attempt to put into words all the decisions that good Ultimate players make unconsciously. As such, I think he wanted to give folks in the room an idea of the types of situations and experiences they need to accumulate and internalize. It actually tied in quite nicely with the keynote. Where the keynote talked about how your play needs to happen in the hind brain rather than the forebrain, Jim's talk focused on what, exactly, your hind brain needs to know. It can only come with experience, but it was interesting to have the types of experience needed articulated. Jim's own weblog post includes links to his PowerPoint slides and handout.

Kudos

My Dad and I left early, so unfortunately I didn't catch the last round of presentations or the panel discussion, but I had a great time nonetheless. Thanks and congratulations to Tiina Booth, George Cooke, and everyone involved for making this happen! This was a very impressive event, and I never would have guessed it was the first one of its kind!

This is pretty cool (if you play Ultimate and read the same weblogs I do): Crossfit gave women's division champs Fury a nod.

Caught up on some reading when I was on vacation, and these two articles, each over a year old, are fantastic. Don't miss 'em:

• The Bell Curve by Atul Gawande ("What happens when patients discover how good their doctors really are?")
• Coach Leach Goes Deep, Very Deep by Michael Lewis ("It's like he's been given this chessboard, and all the pieces but none of the rules, and he's trying to figure out where all the chess pieces should go. From scratch!")

The first is remarkable for underscoring the simultaneously subtle (in terms of what a person does) and glaring (in terms of the results) differences between very good and great. The second is amazing. If a lawyer can reinvent college football offense, imagine the Ultimate renaissance that awaits us if the sport ever gets out of its infancy.

I really enjoyed browsing through Bil Elsinger's Nationals Open Division Finals photos. Lots of great shots, but I particularly liked teasing a story out of a couple sequences. Two examples:

• First, second, third, and fourth.
• First (holy cow!) and second.

I promise not to flood the weblog with these, but ultivillage recently posted another fun clip, this one featuring a huge game-winning catch by Jeff Graham to lock down the #2 NE spot to Nationals. That boy can climb the ladder.

Good clip on ultivillage.com today of an impressive play. The receiver (Fortunat Mueller) simultaneously makes the catch and gets creamed, and then recovers almost instantly to throw a deep scoring pass. Incredible field sense.

Sad to report that our (Koob's) season ended at Regionals this year. On Saturday we lost a close one to GLUM (12-10 in a capped game) and a less-close one to Above & Beyond (15-10). We won our other games, so that put us third after reseeding. We beat Bos in the first round of the backdoor bracket 15-9 or so. Meanwhile GLUM upset A&B in the championship game (not sure of the score, but by all accounts they were on fire winning maybe 15-10 after jumping out to a big lead). So we played A&B in the game to go, and oh oh oh I thought we had 'em. We took half 8-7, but lost 15-12. I would normally include details and color commentary, but I just can't bring myself to. Very proud of my team, everybody played their guts out. Hats off to GLUM and A&B. As much as it sucks to lose (and boy, does it suck), these hard-fought, high-stakes, tough-but-sporting games are why we play.

Nice to come home to a hero's welcome even with our premature exit from the series. Vicky made a great dinner and Amelia (8) and Ella (4) were all over me with sympathy, and were especially good last night. Funny exchange with Ella:

Ella: I'm sorry you lost your frisbee Daddy.
Jim: Thank you, baby.
Ella: But next year, TRY.
Jim & Vicky: [laugh]
Ella: (Wonders for a moment why we're laughing, then...) Try HARDER, I mean.

I will.

The days are getting shorter and Thursday pickup is dwindling. As our Goaltimate kit was late in arriving last night, we played a few rounds of box, which reminds me of a rule variation y'all might like. Everybody has their own rules for how the disc is cleared after a turnover, either past a certain point/perimeter, or after X number of throws. The variation is "the fast break rule" and it works like this: you are allowed to score on the very first throw of your possession after a turnover. If that first throw is not a score (or if you opt to not even try) you then must clear as usual before you are allowed to score. One additional wrinkle: if the turnover occurs in the box, the fast break rule allows the score to be thrown from inside the box (so a player can pick up the disc lying in the box and immediately chip it to a receiver who's also in the box). No Callahan goals, but again, if a defender catches the disc in the box they can immediately throw it to a teammate also in the box for the fast break score.

Of course, if your house rules don't require a clear at all ("scrum rules", I like to call such games), this variation is meaningless.

Until yesterday, I had no luck playing catch with my daughter, either with balls or discs. She's afraid of getting hit with anything hard, and doesn't judge trajectories very well (probably because we haven't played catch enough because of the first problem!). Smaller discs are still too hard for her to use without fear, and the really light cheap-o promotional discs are just too erratic. Same with must weighted fabric discs (and you can't throw a flick).

But I finally think I found the ideal disc for us, as we had a very satisfying round yesterday! It's called the Fun Gripper Flyer, and it comes in 6" and 9" models. I got the 9", which is working out well. It's perfect for my eight-year-old, and I think it would work for my four-year-old too, if she didn't insist on throwing in her own unique style (picture a forehand arm motion, but with a backhand grip). Anyway, it's of the "weighted fabric" variety, but the rim is pretty thick, feels like it had a bunch of little beads in it, and is covered with a rubbery weave. The body is a padded nylon, I think. It holds it's shape pretty well, and you can even throw a serviceable flick with it! It's certainly not a distance disc, but it works great in the 15-25 yard range (we aren't throwing further than that yet). Anyway, I'm going to pick up another and introduce my daughter and her friends to Schtick.

If you wear Adidas Copa Mundial cleats you know two things:

• They're great.
• They're expensive.

Rock-bottom price I've ever paid is $80. Prices gust up to $100. But at the moment you can get 'em for $63 through Amazon.

Regular price is $83 (and that's the price that shows up on the page above). Hopefully you'll see a "Special Offers Available" link on that page. If so, when you add the item to your cart and check out, the $20 discount should be applied (it will show up prior to final confirmation, so you can cancel if it doesn't happen). Shipping is free.

Not sure how long this promotion will last.

The catch is there's a 3-to-5 week wait. I'm going to have to make due with my old ones and some duct tape until then. As long as the new ones are here for Regionals...

Teammate Jon came through with a Log Jam writeup from the FSM perspective. Probably only of interest to participants...

Game 1: vs. Middlebury

Most of us showed up kind of late, and we didn't do a lot of warmup. Most of Middlebury was way faster than most of us, but luckily the young whippersnappers made lots of unforced errors. We played terribly for much of this game. During the stretch when we were playing lousy, we typically got possession of the disc three or four times per point, but could not execute our throws. Lots of turfed throws, inaccurate throws, miscommunications on dumps, etc. A few bad decisions, but mostly just bad throws or crossed signals on pretty good decisions. They took a 10-5 lead. We were very disgruntled. I think I saw some people making cell phone calls during halftime, to see if they could get a spot on another team or something. Then all of a sudden, things changed. We played slightly more conservatively on offense, but it was mainly just that a much higher percentage of our throws were now accurate. We went on what seemed like a very quick and easy 8-1 run to win the game 13-11. There were a few spectacular plays during the run, particularly a huge layout D block by Alec.

Game 2: vs. Chuck Wagon

Chuck Wagon = home team, mostly from Burlington. They beat us pretty convincingly at sectionals last year, won the section, and finished 6th at Northeast open regionals. We played reasonably well early on, taking a 6-5 lead. Seemed like our offense was pretty efficient and our defense adequate. Then they very quickly took advantage of some dumb turnovers to go on a 3-0 run and take half 8-6. Disappointingly, the game was capped at 10 at halftime (!) due to Chuck Wagon's first round game having run way over time. We traded points in the second half to lose 10-8. Still, an improvement for us over our previous meeting with CW, it seems like we legitimately threatened to win this game, sort of.

Bye:

Apparently, much Koob was played. Ancient Viking lawn bowling game, sounds like fun. Also, the inevitable rains begin, and the rain continued intermittently and with increasing intensity through the evening. Cassin, Lester and I went to a coffee shop for lunch and to stay dry, so I have little to report with respect to Koob.

Game 3: vs. East River Yacht Club

This is something like the #3 club team from New York City. They have some pretty good players but make a lot of unforced turnovers. We took care of business pretty efficiently in this one, and won 15-2, similar to the outcome when we played them at WMO. The game was notable for perhaps the worst shanked pull in team history, by yours truly. But we scored that point anyway, so cut me some slack. I think this was also the game where Jim B had a titanic layout D. Thank you very much, Burpees. I can only imagine what would happen if we all worked out as hard as Jim (of course, in my case, I learned this weekend that the answer is "debilitating achilles tendon disorder," but for the rest of you...)

Game 4: vs. PoNY

PoNY is the #1 club team out of NYC, and finished 5th at NE Regionals last year. It was a close game until early in the second half. Then we completely fell apart. The extended display of haplessness included a couple of devastating turnovers on what would otherwise have been short throws for scores for us, that were quickly returned all the way up the field for PoNY scores. They go on something like a 7-1 run to win 15-7.

So we played to seed on Saturday, finished the day 2-2, 3rd in our pool, and were scheduled to play the #2 seed from the other pool in the quarterfinals Sunday morning. By now it was pouring rain, so the outdoor tourney party was pretty much cancelled. No Koob for you. I did a 10-minute ice bath, which was absolutely excruciating, but my legs felt like new afterwards. Rich later did the same, but with even more ice, I feared for his life.

Quarterfinals: vs. Zebra Muscles

Zebra Muscles is the Rochester club team, a middle-of-the-pack performer at NE regionals every year. They were young and quick and played great man defense. We had a small early lead, but then fell behind 7-5 during an ugly stretch. I think I had at least 3 stall-nine turnovers during this run, where it looked to me like all the cuts and dumps were completely covered and often clogging each other to boot. Sorry. Better dump cuts and especially better chiliness from me should fix that in the future. I'm always yelling at people that they should never look off the dump, but I definitely looked the dump off at least once out of frustration when my glares failed to impel action. Someone suggested an L-stack set up where we always have two dump cuts going in opposite directions, I like that idea. Anyway, mistakes were made, and we were sniping at each other. Jim O wisely called a TO and told everybody to stop criticizing each other and to work on doing the ho-stack right. We then got our acts together, with the O team players doing a very nice job with the ho-stack, and before we knew it we took half 8-7. In there somewhere, a tightly covered Alec made a beautiful catch of my huck, which helped me feel not totally useless. Thanks Alec!

We began the second half trading points. Swilly hucks to Jed were unstoppable, he boxes out tres bien. After our only successful zone-to-man transition of the weekend got a turn, the D team calmly punched it in to get us another break and an 11-9 lead. The O team then lost its mojo, turning it over repeatedly and getting scored on three points in a row, so we're down 12-11. I belive Zebra Muscles had a huge layout D on our endzone line leading to one point, and a mac-ed D for a Callahan on another. Ugh. In the meantime, the cap goes on, game to 13. O team stays on, same personnel as the previous three points, but this time they convert to tie at 11. Next point D team fails as the Zebras make good use of their fastest cutters. Then the O team converts again, 12-12. We pull on universe point, play pretty good D, but are lucky that Rochester drops a short pass at midfield. To our credit, we were then very patient with the disc, working it until Alec was able to hit Matt Mann for the 13-12 victory. Overall, a good hard-fought competitive game, nice to pull one of these out once in a while.

Semis: vs. PoNY

The sun came out, it was hot, and our brains and legs were fried. But we played pretty well nonetheless, at least early. We built a 6-5 lead. When we broke the mark and swung the disc across the field, things worked really well. Then we had some dumb turnovers and they took half 8-6. In the second half, we seemed a bit tired and had some inexplicable turnovers. Just a few less missed dumps and swings and we'd be right in it. As it was, there were some moments of brilliance. The best was on a PoNY full-field huck to a guy defended by Jim B. The guy had about 10 steps on Jim and it was a perfect huck, but Jim closed the ground sprinting full out and then jumped / laid out very high to bap the disc away. Beautiful. To reiterate, work out like Jim. Also, some very nice grabs by Jed on more swilly hucks. There was nothing his defenders could do. Lowlights included Rich nearly getting killed on a widowmaker cut. He cuts up line for the scoring pass in the front corner of the endzone, Matt Mann's poaching defender and then Matt converge to the same place, I throw it without seeing Matt's streaking defender, and Rich gets crushed. Sorry again. Bad weekend for me. In the end, we lose 10-15. Without two late game turnovers at the opposing goal line, it's a 12-13 barnburner, so we're not that far off. PoNY went on to destroy New Noise in the finals 15-6.

Jon continues his tradition of writing only good things about his teammates and bad things about himself, so I have to chime in with a few points:

• First off, I'm grateful to Jon for only mentioning my highlights and none of my lowlights, like my five (FIVE!) turnovers in the first half (FIRST HALF!) of the Middlebury game, or those ridiculous slipped flicks, or the dorky gloves (which worked really well, though), or the knifing out-of-bounds backhand to a covered Matt M. at a critical juncture of the Zebra game, or... oh jeez, the list goes on and on.
• It takes two to tango on the throw and the catch, and one of the tricky things about the widowmaker play is that it goes from "easy score" to "geez, I hope nobody dies" in the blink of an eye. I hope Jon isn't feeling too bad about this; shit happens (speaking for my own experience with the widowmaker last year, but I bet Rich feels the same way).
• Finally, Jon ran hard and hucked well. I know now how much the achilles thing sucks, and I can't believe he's been playing through it for so long.

A teammate of mine is theoretically doing a thorough writeup, which I hope to blatantly steal and post here. Real quick though, we got rained on yet again. 4 out of 5 wet tournies since '05 Regionals. We lost in the semis to PoNY. If they went on to beat New Noise (and it was looking that way early on) that makes us 3-for-3 in semis exits against the eventual champs this year. Kinda a dubious honor, but not too shabby for a masters team running against youngsters, and it feels like we keep getting better with age. Anyway, hopefully more to follow.

On a more leisurely note, one of my teammates broke out Köob during our bye. I was only spectating, unfortunately, but it looked like a blast. Think Bocce, but much more interesting (IMO), and suitable to a much broader range of surfaces (you can play Köob on rough terrain, sand, etc. while Bocce is really only any good on a nice court). I'm predisposed to like the Italian goods, but the I gotta give this one to the Swedes hands-down. The quality of the components is excellent (I'm pretty sure that link goes to the same set my teammate has, but I'm not 100% positive). Definitely need to pick up a set before our next vacation.

(Except for some fitness stuff at the end, you can safely skip this post if you [a] don't care about Ultimate, or [b] don't care how my team did at Masters Easterns.)

Whenever it rains at my first tournament of the season I wonder, "hmm, will this be the year where it rains at all of them?" Easterns this past weekend makes it two for two, and if you count The Biblical Regionals Deluge of '05, I've gotten pretty thoroughly soaked at three of my last four tournaments. It's not nearly as troublesome since I started wearing one-day disposable contacts for tourneys (a move I highly recommend for any glasses-wearers still holding out), but still annoying as my wet flick is relatively sucky. But enough about me and the relentless rain...

Masters Easterns, five teams, by seed: Above & Beyond (NY), Big Ego (Boston), ICU (PA), Chop Shop (largely VT, Western MA), Grotesque (other Boston). Format: Four rounds on Saturday, final pool play round at 8:30 (!) Sunday, then a 4-5 play-in game, then semis and finals. The Chop Shop perspective...

Saturday

Round 1, ICU (three seed): If everything else goes to seed, this is the must-win game for both teams to stay out of the 4-5 play-in round on Sunday. They have a much more organized warm-up than us, which I have to admit is always a little worrisome. Happily, we catch them sleeping and go up something like 11-4 before they wake up. Game ends with momentum in their favor, but we take it 15-10. The big shift comes when they start playing underneath to an almost absurd degree, and our deep game never develops in response.

Round 2, Grotesque (five seed): It feels like we're asleep, but I think actually they play pretty well. They put up a lot of big throws and come down with a good number of them. We were never threatened, but they hang around (and hung around with at least ICU as well - not sure about their other games). I think we won 15-8 or so.

Funny aside: I got into this very minor argument with this guy (no stoppage of play, so we're just sniping at each other as we run), he catches it near the goal line, he pivots to break at the same time as I'm stepping to stop the break and I bump his shoulder with my chest as he's throwing. I shout "foul" as the throw is released, and it's caught for an easy score. My guy turns on me outraged until I clarify I was calling it on myself. That is not the first time that has happened to me. I really gotta remember to immediately say "on me".

Round 3, Big Ego (two seed): Ex-DoG. Probably the closest any team I've ever been on has played these guys. Y'know the old saying that if you throw a frog into a pot of boiling water he'll jump right out, but if you throw him in cold water and gradually apply heat he'll swim around unaware until he dies? Well, that's kinda how I feel about their defense in this game. They start off very loose and poachy and wait for us to make mistakes. We immediately go down a couple breaks (sigh), but otherwise hang, losing half 8-6. Imperceptibly, the water has gotten hotter, but we (or at least I) keep thinking the D is just as loose and poachy as it was to start. It's still poachy, but not as loose. Before we know it we're down 11-6. We then show nice resolve to claw back to 13s, but they finish us off 15-13. Nonetheless, a strong showing for us, I thought.

Oh, another funny aside: I'm covering Alex d. and I hand-check him 1.5 times. The first time there's a light touch, but I really gain nothing. The second time it's also a light hand-check, but I definitely get a little bit of help. He says "watch the hand" and I apologize. A few points later he pushes me off with what felt like the exact same amount of force and gets open by an extra yard or two. I think I said (good-naturedly, as it appealed to my sense of justice), "hey, that time it was you - we'll call it even." I like to think it was intentional, and illustrative of the big difference the tiniest push can make. You probably had to be there.

(In my defense, I really try to NOT hand-check. I keep my hands pretty close by my sides, but when the first step comes so close to me that we're shoulder-to-shoulder and my hand is just there my instinct is to provide resistance, not to jerk my hand out of the way (and if we're shoulder-to-shoulder I'd literally have to swing my arm behind my back to get it out of the way). That's the way I rationalize these occurrances anyway. Of course, it's possible I'm subconsciously cheating. How would I know? It happens very rarely though, so it seems more likely it's my hand being run into rather than my hand actively seeking out a hip to push off against.)

Round 4, Bye: Thank goodness, as the hardest rain of the day happens during this round.

Sunday

Round 5, Above & Beyond (1 seed): We hang for a half, but they take it 8-6. We feel pretty good going into the second half, quickly trading points to 9-7, but then the wheels come off. I can't decide if we melted down or if they made us melt down. Probably a little of both. I'm not sure if we scored again. I personally collapsed as well, which pisses me off...

(TO on a long-ish curving flick to an in cut on one point, then like three TOs in the next point (thankfully I didn't spread them out), then on another point a ridiculous inside-out backhand huck on the flick side that didn't go inside out at all, so you can imagine where it landed (I think I made that exact same throw against these guys at Regionals last year - what goes through my head?!))

...Can't tell if my meltdowns drive the team meltdowns or if the team meltdowns drive my meltdowns - I don't even like to contemplate it, really, as the former ascribes more importance to my role than is realistic, while the latter smacks of blaming my teammates for my sucky play. It's probably just a smidgen of both that plays into a massive feedback loop. The more we play together the less frequently these meltdowns occur, but we haven't flushed them all from the system yet. Anyway, good first half. Also fun to play EO and Keebler again, as the last time was all those Albany summer league games many years ago when we had just graduated from our respective schools (Arnold and Adam too, but I've played them a bunch in the intervening years).

Meanwhile, in the other round 5 game, ICU beats Big Ego in a nail biter! Pretty big surprise there. I did note the lack of Barrett, Bickford, de Frondeville, and Mooney in that game (and Seeger, who didn't show until semis), but nonetheless, those guys aren't easy to beat under any circumstances so kudos to the ICU guys for a nice win. This makes us, Big Ego, and ICU all 2-2, so the seeding comes to points. I believe it worked out us, Big Ego, then ICU, so ICU had to play the 4-5 play-in game. We get dry in a Dunkin' Donuts during that game, as we wait for the semis.

Semis, Big Ego: I wonder if those guys draw straws to see who gets to sleep in until semis? Some changes from Saturday: No Bickford, Cooper, or Mooney, but Barrett and de Frondeville are back, and as noted they've added Seeger (I've never played him before - man, he's good, but aren't they all?). No surprise, but they are a different team on Sunday. Their D is similar, but of course they throw us by coming out in a straight man rather than junk, and like yesterday get a break right off the bat. Their offense is much crisper, however, and they don't give us nearly as many opportunities as they did on Saturday. Like yesterday, they take half 8-6. Like yesterday, they grab the first few points of the second half. We then trade it out and end up losing 15-11.

Finals, Above & Beyond vs. Big Ego: Sorry I can't report on this; I had to run some friends to the airport. Anybody know how this turned out? Thank you to "samth" from the comments for pointing out that George Cooke reports Big Ego beating A&B in the finals. Quick check shows Jim's write-up is in as is Alex's.

Wrap-up

Alas. Still, a very good tournament for us, and I continue to feel like we play better in each and every outing. Our victory gaps are widening, our loss gaps are narrowing. Also, the tournament was very cleanly played. The calls were rare, and even during those few that drew heckles it all felt fairly good-natured. Had a blast, despite the weather.

This is a fitness blog though, so I'm contractually obligated to talk conditioning at least a little... All in all, I was pretty pleased with the way I felt. I'm no longer exclusively an O player, which feels good, and I played a lot of points in the A&B and both Big Ego games. Ran just as hard in the semis as in game 1, so that's good, and even played downfield a fair amount in the semis, probably the first time I've done so in like 13 years. I think the training strategies I've adopted continue to pay dividends. Except for height, I consider myself to have pretty sub-par genetics, athletically. In high school I was woefully uncoordinated and was only allowed to play basketball because I was the tallest kid in the school and I could block shots. I was hopeless at everything else. Without lots of training I'm pretty damn slow, and even with lots of training I'm not particularly explosive. Chronic ankle, shin, and knee problems. But with all this stuff, I think I've managed to work my way into the middle of the pack, athletically. I usually work out around four days a week, but the only running I do is during pickup, along with a set of Tabata sprints once or twice a week (sometimes I'll sub in Tabata jump rope or burpees, depending on how my legs feel). It's probably obvious by now, but I'm finding my training strategy boils down to this:

• Tabatas are huge. You still want a well-rounded regime, but if you aren't doing these already, work in a set or two a week and tell me it doesn't make a difference. Remember, each 20-second work period is all out. As Ross Enamait says, "run each one like my pit bull is chasing you." What this means, of course, is that your last 20 seconds will be much slower than your first 20. But that's okay, as long as you're going as hard as you can for each and every interval. Totally, totally sucks. Since your last few sets will be so slow, might be worth doing some speed work on a different day once in awhile (especially if you're like me and you aren't naturally speedy).
• Speaking of Enamait and a well-rounded routine... Absolutely essential reading for any athlete (except marathoners and the like). I don't know how to convince you of this if I haven't already through my other posts.

Results come pretty quickly at the prescribed intensity. Six weeks 'til Log Jam, three months 'till Sectionals. That's enough time to get into pretty killer shape. Get started! Unless you are a potential opponent. In that case I encourage you to watch as much TV as possible, ideally while eating something. Potato chips are an excellent choice.

Too rich for my blood, but I think the Walkstool might be the ultimate Ultimate chair, mostly because it folds down to nothing (here's one clipped to a photographer's belt). A buddy of mine had a knock-off I envied. Not that I'll be trading in my $6 K-Mart special anytime soon, but I would if I had money to burn.

(You can safely skip this post if you [a] don't care about Ultimate, or [b] don't care how my team did at White Mountain Open.)

Not a bad first tourney of the season for Chop Shop (a.k.a. ~10 old men shaking off the winter, plus Young Matt on both days and Even Younger Evan on Sunday). Some random thoughts:

The weather sucked. Saturday was pretty chilly and varying degrees of very rainy all day. The fields held up okay for the first round or two, but then really turned mucky in significant parts. Almost had my cleats sucked off my feet on more than one occasion. It rained all night Sunday, but happily only drizzled on Sunday. Fields were still in sad shape though. Hard to imagine the field owners knew what they were getting into when they gave us the green light no matter the weather.

Interesting format this year, with the big guns (DoG, Twisted, NY) opting for the NJ Invite instead (sounds like they had great weather - damn A-listers have all the luck). 15 teams, 3 pools of five teams, with one elite pool (Red Tide, Bro White, New Noise, Firebird, and Q), and two pools for the rest of us. We are seeded third in our pool. Some results:

Saturday

• Round 1, East River Yacht Club, NY (2 seed): Rainy, cold. Not too mucky yet. Perhaps our age, seed, and generally bedraggled appearance puts them off guard. We win pretty handily. 13-5, or thereabouts.
• Round 2, bye: Man, when I looked at the weather I really thought the second round bye was going to suck, but we found The Nicest Laundromat on the Planet in Woodstock, where we could change, dry our clothes, hang out and watch TV, etc. Possibly the best bye I've ever had.
• Round 3, Magma (1 seed): Rainy, cold, starting to get quite mucky. I recall these guys being a Q-caliber team, but nicer. At least that's the way it was a couple years ago. We must harbor resentment over being taken out of our nice warm laundromat, as we jump them and never look back, winning 13-8 or so, I think.
• Round 4, Les Autres (sp?), (4 seed): More Canadians. Weather still sucks. We play our worst game of the day (or they make us play our worst game of the day) and win something like 13-7.
• Round 5, MUFF, (5 seed): WWI levels of muck on the field now. A Manchester team, many looking high school age or so, but really just seem like friends that got together to try this frisbee thing they've heard about, and are clearly having a ball despite the weather. Many of them throw that "thumb on the rim, disc resting on forearm throw" with reckless enthusiasm, catching Xav in the throat with one (I actually ducked-and-covered as I came in to mark one guy). Fun game. They get 1 on us. "Ruthless efficiency" was the watchword (watchphrase?) not to be mean, but because there's only so much cold and wet one can take in a day.

Sunday

Merely drizzling feels relatively nice, but the fields are still a mess from the all-day/all-night rain. A few open-div teams have gone home, all the elite teams stayed, and we've played up to the six-team championship bracket (we moved up with Dartmouth Alums, Q moved down). New Noise and Bro White get byes. Dartmouth Alums play Red Tide, we play Firebird (more Canadians! Jim O. said they looked like Wax), Much to both teams' surprise, we crush them, 13-4 or 5 (well, I was surprised, anyway; I expected a close game). They seemed a bit too slavishly devoted to their called plays, running them robotically rather than taking what was given. Mostly nice game, nice guys. First time I've ever played in a game where an altercation caused players to be removed from the field though. Nice work by the captains nipping that in the bud.

Anyway, the win got us a match against Bro White (the Slow White males) in the semis. Other semi was Red Tide/New Noise. We hang with Bro to 8-8, then completely fold losing 15-9 (damn damn damn). Not sure how it happened. Fatigue, perhaps. Our decision-making went to pot (since when do I throw hammers?) along with a few gaffes and we were done. Bro goes on to beat Red Tide in the finals 15-11, I believe.

Nice improvement from last year, when we were crushed by Q in the comparable Sunday match-up (they even played the same spread O with slavish comeback cuts, I believe). Lots to work on, but it feels like we're much closer to picking up where we left off last season rather than starting from scratch, and with a skeleton crew at that.

puddleduck asks:

I'd be curious to read your thoughts on skills development and ultimate specific training. Currently I play 2-3 times a week and hope to become an impact player at this level (RIPUL Summer League ... roughly equivilent to Buda's Hatleagues) over the next two seasons.

Other than playing as often as possible, and testing my wife's patients for throwing with me, do you have suggestions for learning the game? I missed out on the opportunity to get coached in college and I don't see myself making a club team anytime soon.

Alrighty! Instruction for new players with perhaps an emphasis on throwing seems to be the target, so here goes:

1. Buy a copy of Ultimate Techniques and Tactics by Jim Parinella and Eric Zazlow. It's fantastic. You will learn much more from it than you will from me.
2. Throw as often as you can. I sometimes feel that players that come to the sport after college are at a big disadvantage. When you are on a team in college, you throw every day, sometimes in multiple sessions, and that doesn't even count practices. You'll see teammates between classes and you'll kill time by tossing. You almost can't help but become a good thrower. I play with a fair number of guys who came to the sport after college, and their throws have taken much longer to develop. Repetition, repetition, repetition.

3. Fix your grips sooner rather than later. When I first started playing I threw my backhand with my index finger laying along the rim. It took six months before a more experienced player noticed and said to me, "you know, nobody who's any good holds their backhand like that." Argh (thank you, Will Heyman). Fortunately, with only six months under my belt the rebuild wasn't too painful. You should squeeze your backhand in your fist, all fingers curled under the rim. Much more power than the finger-out grip.

   As for the flick, they tell me you should have two fingers on the rim but I can't help you there, as I've been using the split-finger grip (index finger on the rim, middle finger pointing towards the middle of the disc) for 17 years and it's too late for me to change now (I've tried). But if you're still finding your style, you should probably get a two-finger flick thrower to teach you. Watching the teams warm up for the finals at Open Nationals last year, seemed like the split-finger grip was the rare exception.

   (A story about my inferior grip: a teammate was trying to convince another split-finger thrower to change grips. He was going around demonstrating that all the good throwers threw two-finger. Until he got to me, and was shocked to discover I was in the split-finger camp. Kinda undermined his case. So I've made do. But still, if I had it to do over again...)

4. When you practice throwing, throw like you will in a game. Fake, pivot, throw. Don't just stand upright and casually toss. Especially if you aren't throwing every day. Make your rare throwing sessions count. Most importantly...

5. Get your body low when you throw! Practice pivoting wide and throwing from a lunged position. Bend from the knees, not the waist. You want to be able to pivot from the forehand lunge to the backhand lunge and back while maintaining balance about your center of gravity. There are throwers that can break the mark at will while standing more upright, but in my experience many of the good mark-breakers do it with the legs and low throws.

   (Another story: the player that gave me the biggest nightmares was Jeff Capella. I often ended up covering him, and was always woefully outmatched. I remember once trying to mark him, and he had pivoted way out for the forehand. Then way back for the backhand. The thing was, he never came out of the crouch when transitioning. It was like he was on rails, and his shoulders never got higher than three feet off the ground. The worse part was when he'd get to the middle of transitioning from forehand to backhand, and would rapidly juke back-and-forth in this crouched position before extending out for an easy throw around my hapless mark. Nightmares, I tell you.)

6. Don't learn a high-release backhand. You will fall in love with it, and you will always use it to break the mark to the forehand side. You will use it at the expense of your low-release backhand and break-mark flick. It will become a crutch, but one that you can't use at all in the wind. You will use it for years anyway, before finally admitting to yourself that it sucks, and going back to learn the throws you should have been using all along. Trust me on this.
7. Get in shape, stay in shape. It feels worse to get beat by bad players who outrun you than good players who outplay you.
8. There are two ways to mark effectively: cheat, or move your feet. Cheating is easy, moving your feet is hard. You have to decide which kind of marker you want to be: [a] ineffective, [b] dishonorable, or [c] really, really tired from working so hard. Most guys that stop me from breaking the mark do it by blatant fouling on the pivot, so I really admire the guys that do it with footwork.
9. When covering a cutter, adopt a proactive mindset. Reactive defense generally sucks (when you wait to see what your man is going to do and then you chase him). Get where your man wants to go first. Even better, make him go where you want him to. This is a pretty subtle skill, requires a good team defense, and is not one I'm particularly good at. But every now that then I've felt it, and it feels great.

That's all off the top of my head. You'd think 17 years of play would amount to more advice. Any tips from readers?

Finally got to play some disc outside yesterday! Very windy Goaltimate. The gang has had some lovely weather and sevens for Ultimate previous to yesterday, but conflicts have heartbreakingly kept me away. Anyway, aside from one gymnasium session mid-winter, this was my first play since the ankle sprain closed out my 2005 season. I was curious how I'd feel, as I've been training pretty hard all winter, but with a conspicuous lack of running. Would all those burpees translate? I was worried, as in my experience you can be in great shape and still suck at running if you haven't been doing it, but I was pretty happy with the day. Legs and lungs felt great, although I'm sure the wind and lack of full-field Ultimate helped with that. And I had to quit early with a "deep blister", the second of my life. Let me tell you, when the FixingYourFeet guy says:

Am I a stickler about calluses? You bet. I've seen the grimaces on the faces of athletes who have deep blisters that cannot be repaired without a lot of pain. I've seen them hobble off, knowing it won't get any better.

... he knows what he's talking about. Much worse than a surface blister. I didn't even think my calluses were too thick, but I'll definitely be doing some maintenance. There, that's more than enough about my feet.

Man, White Mountain Open is only like four weeks away! Psyched.

A reader recently asked how I modified the sample program in Infinite Intensity for Ultimate. My reply is here, and hopefully of interest to non-Ultimate players as well, as most of my modifications are not Ultimate-specific.

Another great post from Kenny Dobyns, this one on fame, respect, and those that need it. Read that, then Jim Parinella's thoughtful response.

I've been so enjoying the unfolding drama of Kenny Dobyns coming out of rec.sport.disc retirement that I had to expand my previous "Kenneth44" post. Here are some highlights of how it has gone so far, as near as I can tell...

1. KD returns after a three-year-or-so hiatus to criticise the new Ultimate History book.
2. Jim Parinella notes KD's return, comments. KD notices, replies, defines "milk toast" vs. "milquetoast".
3. Alex DeFrondeville also takes note, sets record straight on "The Call."
4. As a bit of an aside, KD does a tongue-in-cheek comparison of the Ultimate History book and Ultimate Techniques & Tactics.
5. Somewhere in there KD starts blogging.
6. Meanwhile, back in the thread that started it all: two posts of note: Eric Zazlow's, and KD's reply.
7. Which brings us, finally, to the post that prompted me to summarize all this in the first place, "it ain't easy being me". Lots of great stuff in there. A taste:

   so, why the pity party? why now? well, the recent reactions to my rsd posts have ranged from the "you're unnecessarily harsh," which i deserve, particularly as it relates to my post about jessi's research, to "you owe more to the game considering your stature and reputation," to which i say nonsense. after two hospital stays (one in intensive care), two knee surgeries, and countless cuts contusions, bumps and bruises, i owe this game nothing. it's one thing to say a professional athlete who has parlayed a playing career into a tidy living owes a bit of respect back to the people who lined his pockets, but all ultimate ever provided me was a place to compete. in return, i brought everything i had to the table every time i played. if you ask me we both kept up our end of the bargain. we're square.

I should end on that note, but I can't resist linking to this blast from the past. Trash talk, with almost everybody above making an appearance.

Oh, a better note to end on... KD's teacher journals are compelling. What a shame a happy ending is unlikely. I bet he's a great teacher.

Two quick Ultimate variants before I hit the sack: Durango Boot and Schtick. Both of these might be fun to play in the gym, since the outdoor season is well and truly over here. Thanks to Seigs for the lead; I had never heard of these before.

Man, Nationals is a blast. It would have to be for me to remember it fondly despite losing all our games and badly spraining my ankle on the first point of Saturday play, prematurely ending my season (at least it didn't happen on the first point Thursday!). The fields, each one perfectly level and filled with fabulous Ultimate players, stretch a half-mile into the distance. The weather was heavenly, the on-site vendor makes a mean étouffée, and the beaches on Siesta Key are wonderful.

As for the games, of our seven losses I would say two teams were out of our league, two we should have beaten, and the rest we could have beaten. In all but the two blowouts, we were tied at nines or tens before our Nationals rookiedom took over, and we let the games get away from us (or had them taken away, depending on your point of view). Ah well, ya gotta start somewhere. Not bad for a bunch of small town players. Here was Salt's team bio:

Great Barrington, MA: population ~7,500
Brattleboro, VT: population: ~12,000

Spring, 2005. In a move that has all the makings of a bad bar bet, two guys—one from each "city"—get together and gamble that a Nationals-caliber team can be assembled from these two remote Ultimate scenes. Add a couple transients and precious few ringers to this briny mix of small town, home-grown players, and you end up with Salt!

I'm still impressed we could pull off such a season by combining these two small-town scenes. Everybody on our roster has played pickup in one of these two towns except for four players. Of those four, one missed pretty much all of the season (including Regionals) due to injuries, another was a Nationals rookie, the third had only made one late-career appearance on a mixed team, and the fourth was... well, he was a Masters National champ teammate of a brother-in-law of a Berkshire player, so I think I have to put him solidly in the "ringer" camp. The brother-in-law was on that same team, but he played pickup with us, so is not one of the four.

Anyway, never has the line between 0-7 and 5-2 felt so slim. Already looking forward to next year!

The latest issue of Outside has an article on Rod Liberal's brush with death via lightning:

Watching an electrical storm from afar is a natural spectacle, but there's good reason to feel fear when it comes closer. If you could stop any one of the 25 million flashes that touch down in the U.S. each year—gargantuan electrical discharges created by the buildup of excess negative charges in clouds—you'd feel heat of up to 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit, five times hotter than the surface of the sun. A single flash can carry more than 100 million volts, the equivalent of 833,000 people sticking paper clips into electrical outlets. And lightning has been known to roam as far as 15 miles from the storm that bred it before striking from a clear blue sky. One minute you're the master of a fourteener; the next you're on a gurney with a tube down your throat and a lifetime of recovery ahead of you—if you even survive the current ripping through your nervous system, which can instantly shut down your heart.

Even though I'm pretty good at getting off the field when death from above threatens, I'm probably not good enough. This got me to thinking about the stats, because inevitably somebody wants to keep playing, citing various quoted miniscule odds of being killed in a given year. Conveniently enough, the National Safety Council has an Odds of Dying page (1 in 1, given enough time :-). For lightning, 66 people were killed in 2002, so the NSC rates that as you having a 1 in 4,362,746 chance of dying from lightning in a given year. However, these odds are calculated based on the total US population, which includes the vast majority of people smart enough to stay inside when the thunder booms. What you really need to know, and which is probably unknowable, is how many people in a given year spend time outside during a lightning storm. Divide that number by 66 and then talk to me about odds...

The training paid off! My team, "Salt", qualified in the Masters division. We have a couple studs, but mostly we are a team full of role players from small towns, and it was a true team effort to make the grade at Regionals (especially after an abysmal Saturday showing in equally abysmal weather). I couldn't be more proud of my teammates, so many of whom (myself included) have never qualified before. Heck, many of our players have only ever played small-town Ultimate, and have little or no college or club experience outside that afforded by the gradual evolution of their local game.

So one of our guys calls his wife (who, like all frisbee spouses, is a champ) and tells her we made it. Her response: "That's great. The basement is flooded."

Ah yes, such is the life of the non-professional athlete. :-) Did I mention three inches of rain fell on us during Saturday play?

There's a very interesting table embedded in this Paul Chek article. It's from the late Mel Siff's Supertraining, an out-of-print book I really should track down. The table lists...

...contribution of short, intermediate and long-term energy systems to common sports. This information is useful in determining acute exercise variables for program design. Please note that most sports are anaerobic, yet many athletes and coaches make the mistake of using aerobic training to prepare for anaerobic sports, which actually decreases performance.

So is Ultimate more like basketball, or soccer? And if soccer, which position? Keep in mind there's more subbing in Ultimate (which is not to say I've already formed my opinion).

I can think of few athletic endeavors where wet, sweaty hands are an advantage. Playing Ultimate, the range and consistency of my forehand suffers in the rain, or on the steamiest days (I know, I know, it's because I've been holding it wrong for 16 friggin' years - I'm going to rebuild my grip in the off-season). So I was pretty interested to discover that the Power Rings folks sell a product called Tite-Grip. It sounds like it's a heavy-duty anti-perspirant so it, combined with wristbands, might be a boon for hot, humid Ultimate days. But what about the rain?

Well, there's another product called Dry Hands that bills itself more as a kind of wicking solution than an anti-perspirant, and it claims to be effective in the rain. There's quite a testimonial on rec.sport.disc. I'll have to give this one a whirl. I'll report back after the next rain game.

I have a friend who is a fabulous Ultimate Frisbee player. For years he has struggled with "TFD" (Total Foot Destruction) due to blisters. No combination of socks or cleats could prevent this. I too struggle with blisters, but not to the same degree (probably because, sadly, I don't cut nearly as hard as this fellow). Anyway, he recently hit upon a solution and has been singing its praises: instead of socks, wear two pairs of polypropylene sock liners. He swears by it. I gave it a go, and the results were very promising. I wasn't willing to give up the cushioning of the outer sock, but had taken to wearing two pairs of poly liners under a pair of cotton socks, and was pleased with the results.

But then I found the socks that I think make this technique complete and bulletproof: two pairs of WrightSock Double-Layer Coolmax Socks with a cotton pair on top. The Wright socks really are double layer, but they're nice and thin, so this approach basically puts five layers between you and your shoes without feeling absurdly bulky. I have yet to tourney-test this combination, but I have run through two five-hour practices shod thusly, and my feet have never felt better.

I think I paid like eight bucks a pair at EMS for mine, so this Roadrunner deal seems like it might be good, depending on shipping. I have not done much bargain shopping for these yet though, so definitely take a look around. Here are some Froogle results. That's sorted by "best match", so you could try resorting by price, but that usually pulls up some dicey-looking vendors.