Hot As Hell At Crockett

God, has it really been that long since I last posted on this blog?  Things have been furiously chaotic, and seriously changing.  So I haven't played a lot of tennis lately.

But today I moseyed out to Crockett High to play tennis with a group of folks.  It was 105 degrees.  I remained standing (and running and such) for two hours and I'm not quite sure how.  At some point, I felt like the sun was just going to take me.  I felt weak in the knees, and nausea seemed to grip my whole body.  But for some reason my play improved.

Yes, I was ready to die, and just kept going.  Even though most sane people would have stopped and maybe even gone straight to the hospital.  I just figured that if I died right then on the tennis court, it was the way it should be.  So I kept going, potential heat stroke be damned.

I did get over the worst of it, but decided to throw in the towel after a couple of hours.  I won some, lost some.  Didn't play any singles this time because there were a bunch of people and only a few courts, so it was all either doubles or Australian.

A Brief Foray At Austin High

I haven't been blogging for a while.  I have been playing, but not as much as I had been.  But I've gotten lazy about blogging.  I've only played two or three times since the last time I did a blog post and nothing spectacular happened.

Tonight nothing spectacular happened either.  I only played for a little while; maybe a little over an hour.  I was kind of lethargic and left early.  My play was pretty uninspired and I was late in my responses to almost everything, so I thought I'd call it a night.  I hit a few good shots but mostly misfired.

Two Days of Yuck

So there were two days I played this week in which my play was just dismal and uninspired.  On the first night, it was so bad that it was contagious to every doubles partner I played with.   Not only was I making stupid errors, but so was every person who was privileged to play on my side.  All we did was play doubles on Wednesday.  There were only five people at first (we rotated one out every point), and then four.

Tonight, I continued my dismal streak.  No sure what is up with my play for these two days but, hopefully, it can only get better.  We played "King of the Court" where one court was top court (we had four courts) and loser moved down one court, winner moved up (except on first and last courts where winner stayed and loser did too unless someone needed to rotate in).  I did make it to top court once, but didn't stay long.  Mostly I was on second and third courts.  But there was an anomaly in that I beat one of the best players (he started on last court because he arrived late; we played on third court but I sent him back to last. But he made it to first court soon thereafter).

More Better Stuff

Played again tonight...it was more better.  Seemed like it was doubles alternating with singles for me.  Four games at a time...I think I won all the singles and maybe lost one doubles.

I used to dislike doubles.  But it's growing on me.  Maybe I need a game to play once I get old.

Another Match That Is Close But No Cigar

Stuart v. B. at Martin Junior High.  Winner: B. 3-6, 6-4, 6-2.

Dang, it's been so long since I've played a three-set match that I had almost forgotten that playing a match for two and a half hours can be a lot different from playing a bunch of four-game thingies (I don't even know what you call it when you play four games).  Especially when the games have super-long rallies and go back and forth between deuce and advantage a lot.  Like today.

In each set, I started out behind, but then rallied up to speed to come up from behind.  In the first set, I was down 0-2 and came back to with the next six out of seven games.  In the second set, I was down 0-4, then won the next four games, but lost the last two.  In the third set, I was also down 0-4 but only managed to win the next two games.  So my comeback petered out a little more each time.

But there were a lot of games in which both of us hit shots that probably neither of us thought we would get back.  In some of them, it happened in rapid succession.  That's what makes for a good tennis match.  There was a lot of running around and a lot of playing for position.

In the end, it just boiled down to the fact that my shots were not as good, I was falling short into the net and going long past the baseline too much, and I just made more dummkopf errors than he did.

Well, there wouldn't have been a cigar anyway...

Tonight It's Martin

Tonight it was a night of playing at Martin Junior High.  No sets today; the closest was a bunch of doubles games that we could have taken to a set but everybody was ready to switch up, so we switched when we were ahead 4-1.

Some guy showed up who was one of the best players I've seen here in a while; he played on a doubles group with me where we switched everybody within the group until we had exhausted all the combinations.  Needless to say, every team he was on won...

Played a singles with N. where I won 4-0.  It wasn't a terribly spectacular night though I thought I was hitting well.

Two Hours At Crockett High

Was a little low-energy today, so only played for a couple of hours...there were a lot of doubles that landed at 3-1, mostly I was on the losing sides. :-(  But I did win a couple, and there was one that we played that ended at 2-2.

Then I played a singles set with a guy who looked high school age or maybe a little older and I won 6-0.  We had a couple of close games but mostly I held all the points well and ran to get just about everything, as usual.  Most of the rallies just ended with me hitting the last ball over the net.

Two Days

I played on Tuesday at Martin Junior High and today (Thursday) at Little Stacy Park.  Funny how I barely remember Tuesday's play now.  But I do remember that I won one set (don't remember the score or who I played) and then played a bunch of games with other people, both singles and doubles, and one on two.  I played from about 5:30 until almost 8.

Tonight I started out playing doubles, and we just went ahead and played a match because the guys playing singles next to us did the same thing.  The first set was close at first...we got to 4-4 with each side winning on their serve, and then we broke the other side's serve to get to 5-4.  It was my serve the last game, and I won my serve to win the first set 6-4.

Then the second set was more lopsided...we held most points and won 6-1.  For a while we then played two-on-one rotating around clockwise every game so everybody got to play every position in both singles and doubles.  I won on every side except for one game that B. won at singles.

Then I stuck around to play another set against J.  I was playing well and getting everything back and my serve was good too.  He was hitting really big but missing some shots.  I ended up winning the singles set 6-2.

Another Successful Capitol 10K

OK, this isn't really about tennis, but close enough.  I don't have a running blog, so here it lands.

It was another successful and fun Capitol 10K.  This year, the race started earlier than in the last few years, at 8 am.  I prepared fairly lackadaisically and got there probably about five minutes late.  No biggie--though the elite runners had already started running, many others had not even gotten to the finish line yet.  And in the spirit of the last few races I had run, I tried to be near the end of the finish line.  This is because if I start in the middle of the pack, at the place that I should start at for the pace I would run, there is such a crush of humanity that it becomes dangerous.  A crush of 20,000 runners or so all trying to pack in one street's width, trying to pass people and dart in and out of perceived holes in the crowd, and enormous amounts of traffic jams, make it not worth it for me to get in the wolf pack.

Besides, I'm not really running competitively anyway.  I just want to have a pleasant run, and make it to the end.

I wouldn't say I ran this race completely cold, but I haven't been running much regularly lately.  Maybe I've run three times in the last three months.  So it's pretty close to running cold.  I guess as I get older I worry about my knees holding out more.  They seem mostly OK, but are showing a few signs of wear.  You would think tennis would tear them up too, but for some reason I'm less worried about the effect playing tennis had on them.

Here's how I can tell I had a good race:

1. I made it to the end.
2. I experienced no major life-threatening events.
3. I didn't tear any important body parts (at least not in an impairing fashion)
4. Both my knees and my back still kinda work (even if they're a little crunchy).

Here's a better-than-average race for me:

1. I ran the whole way and didn't peter out.
2. I wasn't counting mile markers and begging my body for the strength to get to the next one.
3. I had an average, comfortable, even pace.

So by those standards, this race was better than average.  Even if I start at the back of the pack, I'll catch up to some serious foot traffic around mile one.  But this race, I took most of the far corners on turns instead of the close corners and that helped with density.  Around mile three, I started catching up with run/walkers, and between mile four and five I started catching up with runners again.  I was running at a pleasant, meditative pace, just studying my Polish flash cards occasionally, and all of a sudden I was at mile four.

I thank my lucky stars that I wasn't the guy puking his guts out over the 15th St. (or is it Enfield at this point?) bridge over the neighborhood near Pease Park right after Lamar.  I'm also glad I wasn't the person I saw being loaded into an ambulance at the corner of San Antonio and Cesar Chavez.

The most intense hill is probably between Lamar and Murray St. (a few blocks east of Mopac) on Enfield.  Then there is a brief respite and the next most difficult is probably shortly afterwards between Enfield and 10th St. on the Mopac frontage road (Winsted Ln.?).

All in all, it was a good race.  It'll be great if I can do it next year again.

Long Day

Today I played tennis from about 9:30 am until about 2:30 pm, with hardly any breaks except to drink some water between some games.  There was a group meetup at 9:30 am, and another at noon, and I signed up for both of them.  Both were at Crockett High.

Mostly we were playing four games in groups on singles and doubles, but I played a few sets and some near-sets.  Usually the sets ended up getting played when we had finished four games and nobody else was ready to switch up teams, so we kept playing. The first set was against T., which I won 6-3.  We were keeping pace for the first few games and it was 2-2, and then I broke his serve to win a game, and won the next game to make it 4-2.  He ended up winning one game after that but I won two to take the set.  We started another and I was up 2-0 but the group was at a switching point so I moved into some doubles.

The next doubles thing my team ended up winning 5-0 before we switched the teams around and played only four games.  I played another singles that I won 5-1.  There were a couple of doubles things that my team lost pretty decisively after four games, but I think I either won everything else either individually or as a team.  That was a lot of tennis and I definitely feel like I have been working it today.  Tomorrow is the Capitol 10K, and I'll be up bright and early to run in that.

Little Stacy Today

Played one set at Little Stacy today:

Stuart v. N. at Little Stacy.  Winner: Stuart 6-4.

I started out really crappy.  I was not hitting well and he was hitting great, including his serves.  I was getting outflanked and was getting shots hurled at me that were fast and out of reach and it was frustrating me.  I was mostly holding my serve but losing on his.  First he won a game, then I won a game, then it turned around, and I won his serve and then he won mine so it was tied at 2-2.  Then I fell apart and was down 4-2.  The next game I was down 40-love on his serve and just bore down to win a point at a time and brought it to deuce.  Then I won the next two points and brought it up to 4-3.  I won my serve next and got it to 4-4, then I regained a little confidence and a lot of game, and won the next two games.  Pulled it out of the abyss.

Before this, we had been playing doubles where we rotated in.  There were seven of us on one court so three were always sitting out.  The courts were really crappy after the recent rain and there was a lot of debris on the court we were playing on, and the other one was taken.  There was some slippery gravel near the back of the north side of the court, and my doubles partner L. slipped and fell on the gravel and really messed up his knee and had to take off.  I had slipped a couple times too on the gravel but luckily hadn't fallen into it.  Everybody was watching out on that end of the court--we tried to kind of sweep it away with our feet but weren't too successful.

Before the singles set I played, we had changed over to king of the court doubles, and played a couple rounds of that.  But then two of us split off for singles, and the other four just played a set of doubles.

After the set, three of us were left and just played king of the court singles.  I won all those games and stayed on the king court.  Then we all called it a night and took off.

Lotsa Rain

Shoot, I was supposed to play today and yesterday, but it's been raining like crazy and the courts have been rained out.  Oh, well...we need the rain and it's going away after today.

Father v. Daughter, But Called Off Early

Stuart v. E. at Patterson Park.  Called off at 1-6, 5-2.

Played my daughter again fresh after her victory winning first place in her high school district tournament the day before.  She really dominated the first set, though I got a few good points in and my serve was decent.  In the second set, I was picking up steam and getting better focus, but she was getting a tennis elbow thing happening and had to quit before the second set was over.  I felt like I was playing well in the second set, though, and had really good control and anticipation.

Stuart v. ? at Martin Junior High.  Winner: Stuart 6-0

Hadn't played in a while and got a little sore afterwards.  The score did not reflect the play very much as we got to a lot of deuce and ad points and had some pretty good rallies but I had the better part of persistence and maybe a fresh perspective after having not played.

Played a bunch more tennis after this but no sets...most was just best of three or four games in either singles, doubles or Australian (one against two).

Father v. Daughter--Loss #2 For Me

Stuart v. E. at Patterson Park.  Winner: E. 2-6, 6-4, 6-4.

My Mojo: Strong, Then Deflating.

One advantage of the confluence of the end of my daughter's school tennis practice and my current transportation situation is that we have more time to play tennis with each other.  Today we went to Patterson Park.

My daughter had just gotten her two racquets restrung and so we picked them up.  When she was playing with them, she was complaining about how the strings didn't feel right, so we warmed up for a long time so she could get a chance to get used to them.

Of course, almost the first shot of the warmup, she slammed me really hard in the nuts with a missile shot, and I immediately crumpled to the ground in extreme pain.  I was finally able to get up after about a couple of minutes, while the people in the next court stared on in horror.  Good to toughen up the old gonads early on.  But maybe it's time to start wearing an iron cup.

Today I felt like I was playing more solidly than the last match.  I was returning most of her missile serves, though some of my returns were more defensive than offensive; still, I was getting good placement.  Also, I was not getting outplayed as much in rallies and she did not get to net as much, and I got to net a little more.  There seemed to be this recurring theme too of shots coming right at my body, and I often had to just stick the racquet in front of me at some weird angle just to avoid being hit.  Daddy issues?

The first set I held pretty steadily.  In the second set, I thought I would win almost as easily, but after I had won four games, she roared back and started getting me with the shots that pulled me to one side and set up hot blast in the other direction out of my reach.  But this didn't happen as often as the last match we played.  Also, I was returning a few weakly, which she almost always took advantage of with a great smash back.  I knew almost every time as soon as the ball left my racquet with a fairly weak return that I was going to get creamed when she hit it back as she is definitely good enough to exploit that.

And she ended up coming back in the second set to win 6-4.  Rats.  So we ended up playing a third set.  In this last set, we kept pace with each other; first it was 1-1, then 2-2, then she got up to 4-2, and I tied it up at 4-4.  Then she broke out with really good play, and I fizzled out.  The last two games were no contest as she won the set 6-4.

Though I lost, it was closer than last time, I was more satisfied with my play throughout (except at the end), and we actually each won the same number of games.