One Brief, Shining Moment

Ultimate

The last few years since I broke my ankle, it’s been a recurring story of rehabbing a lingering physical issue only to have something else betray me. Most recently, I spent the winter strengthening my ankle and back and getting into shape so I wouldn’t hurt myself at New Years’ Fest. The Reed alum team went as the Reed College Utah Jazz, below, and had a blast.

However, early Sunday I slammed my knee into the clay on a layout D and, after the bruising and swelling went down, I’ve still had fluid and numbness– probably acute bursitis that recurs if I lay out without knee pads. This set me back far enough that, combined with unemployment, it was clear that Rhino wasn’t in the cards for me this summer.

Naturally, after a few months of work to stabilize the knee and get my aerobic fitness back up to par, I tore my hamstring at Knife Fight practice last week. This is the third major episode of this, starting the last weeks of my senior year at Reed, and I know that I’ve got a month of rehab ahead of me plus another month of gradual strengthening– meanwhile losing ground on throws and drills and team time. Right now, though, I’ve given myself another week of absolutely no running, and we’ll check in when I start swimming and trying out a series of flexibility runs– thanks BLW for providing these with some advice.

Darts

Yep, I’ve been working hard during this stage of limited employment to get better at darts. Three seasons of team league gone by, I have two C-league championships and a B-league semifinals exit under my belt and have started to try my hand at singles competition.

I entered the Oregon Open in early April and thoroughly embarrassed myself on both days of competition. The first day was blind draw doubles; I got paired with a guy who probably tied me in the bottom 5% of the players there. We both knew it, and it sent our mental game to utter hell. I played the worst darts of my life, my hands were shaking uncontrollably, I was missing the board entirely and not having fun; completely in my own head. The only other darts experience I’ve had like it was when I had food poisoning during a team match; we won handily but I still felt like I’d lost. Left feeling miserable ad embarrassed; I knew if I played at my average skill level we would have won a few legs easily.

I went back the second day for Doubles 501 with my team captain, Mike. The competition was much better, since the pairings weren’t random, and we performed much better. However, the play started about two hours after the scheduled time, so by the time we faced an opponent Mike and I were on the bad side of a number of large, cheap rum and cokes. Over the next few hours we played some great games, won several against players that on other days would be out of our league, and lost a few gimme games by not hitting our outs. In the end, we were eliminated after pool play, and I was totally out of control. Amongst all the slurring, I have a memory of jogging to the pisser for the 20th time, weaving drunkenly among hundreds of people holding sharp things. Not my finest hour, but a ton more fun than the previous day.

Determined to leave the solo competition jitters behind me, I entered Portland’s summer singles league. There are 4 ranked divisions of six players, and I’m in the bottom division. Three months of work later, I’m a quantifiably better player than at the Open– specifically, consistency on scoring in 01, more out practice, and work on my weak areas of the board in cricket. The league shook itself out quickly; over halfway through I’m solidly the second best player in my division of 6.

On July 30th, 2008 I broke my ankle playing Ultimate at Reed, ending my club season.
I was first on crutches, then in a walking boot then brace for about a month and a half.

As soon as the doc said my bone was healed, I started pushing my body harder than I ever have before, working with my frustration of months of not being able to use my body. As you can guess, after rushing into 6-days-a-week of either lifting, running, playing or plyos without rebuilding a base of strength, my body said ‘fuck you’ and hit me with incapacitating back pain and worrisome knee instability. I lessened my intensity and hoped my body would catch up– no luck. After an embarrassing attempt to play a tournament at the University of Oregon at the end of November, I decided to take a month an a half off. Also, I began to see a chiropractor with experience with athletes.

I took all of December off, barring back stretching exercises prescribed by Dr. Higginson, and began doing back strengthening exercises and running on a treadmill the first week of 2009. I’ve also tried to combat the unavoidable back damage that sitting down all day can do by walking around and stretching at work, and using a yoga ball instead of a chair. I started throwing again the second week of January, and kept running a few days a week, though my stamina was shot.

This past weekend (Jan 30-Feb 1) I went to Phoenix, Arizona to play in a tournament with a Reed reunion team. I had a spectacular weekend, seeing a lot of guys I hadn’t seen in ages, some for a few years. I was in no kind of aerobic shape, but my back, knee and ankle treated me very well.

CROM-- Reed Reunion 2009

I rate my play at an even C, on the scale of best play of my life being an A+. I didn’t have the throws I used to, but occasionally tried to throw as if I did, which normally resulted in a turnover. I’m smart/experienced enough to be able to play poach/contain D without fucking my team over; however, I’m used to being one of the fastest people on the field at all times. To not be able to take that for granted was pretty tough. It’s a point of pride that I rarely get scored on whatever level I play at, but I gave up three points this weekend.

In the next few months, I’m looking forward to pushing myself, in a considered way, towards getting in shape for Rhino season again.  Tryouts are going to be hard, and I feel like I’m going to need to work harder than most to make the team again– again, because as a veteran the team will need to take some things for granted; I don’t have the rookie’s fallback of working towards a hoped-for potential.

Here’s an email I set Google to send me in March, back when I was on crutches:

Shane. This is broken-ankled Shane calling.
Pull your fucking shit together, kid.
Remember what it was like to sit in a chair with a camera for two days. To not be able to carry shit. Not run, skip, throw, jump.

When are Rhino tryouts? How are your throws?
Remember sucking it up at track workouts this year? Start now, and be at the front of that pack.

What’s your fucking excuse?

There’s always an excuse; it’s time to be bigger than those.

I’m looking forward to 2009 very much, in terms of Ultimate.

I’ll write a longer post about my rehabilitation from a broken ankle and other attendant failures, next week.

In the meantime, check out two articles I wrote from the ‘Web Magazine’ The Huddle:

College Development #1 and College Development #2

#33, 2008

Portland Rhino (white) vs. Germany (yes, the country, red)