Week 19- Armstrong but not Legstrong

My plan for the week was to make the most of my few free days to plan some of my Australia trip and get some other organisational pieces done. This all started well on Monday morning and then I went to Groot Frisbee training before there was a pre-Mixed-Nationals pot luck dinner with the University team. It took place at Andy’s house and he very kindly let us use his pool to wash off the sweat from training. The pot luck dinner was very casual and as you might expect I ended up eating far more food than I brought. When I got home I was asked if I would mind hosting Marlene for a couple of nights as those living in the Huia residence had to move out the next day. I said no problem and let my roommates know that there will be a friend staying in the empty room. The rough plan was that Charlotte, Mathias and Eemelie were spending a week touring north of Auckland in a hire car and then would return to collect Eemelie’s car which was at a garage and collect Marlene on the way back (She was going on a kite surfing trip on Thursday).

On Tuesday morning, the trio set off on their adventure and Marlene arrived with her friend Ingeborg who was also expecting to stay. Her request must have been lost in translation. I thought that this wouldn’t be a problem. The two of them could share the same room and no one would be the wiser. I went back to my planning when we got a text to say that the expedition to the north had been side tracked by a small collision on Symonds Street (about 10 minutes from their departure point). By the time they had towed the undrivable hire car to the garage, filed the police report, received a new hire car and made it back to my flat it was about 16:00 so they decided to wait till after rush hour and have dinner in Auckland. Although I was sad to hear they had lost a day of their trip I was relieved that they had insurance for everything and was also glad of the company. I helped them file a claim and we had dinner as a big group. At about 19:30 they decided that they were too tired to leave so they’d stay the night in Auckland and leave the next morning. As Charlotte had already checked out she was not allowed stay in her flat so all five guests were in my flat. Two in the room upstairs and three on the floor in the lounge.

I felt bad that I had only asked my roommates for one guest and now there were five but as I am almost always the first up I thought I could get up first, rouse my friends and my roommates wouldn’t know they had all spent the night. Unfortunately, one roommate decided to break their not-getting-up-before-ten tradition and opened the lounge door to three unconscious bodies on the floor at 06:00. Sometimes things don’t go quite according to plan. Eventually they managed to get underway and I was left with Marlene and Ingeborg. I had a wonderful video call with my good friend Eoghan at home before I cycled with Julian to Mission Bay to throw the frisbee around and swim in the sea. I was in a happy place. That evening I played another spring league game with the University team, which we won.

The two girls departed on Thursday around lunchtime, though they left much of their stuff to collect on their way back through on Monday. With my room piled high with luggage for three I spent most of Thursday cooking and prepping food for the weekend at the New Zealand Ultimate Frisbee Mixed Nationals. Once the meals were cooked and I’d robbed enough free food from other leaving residents I finished off my book ‘It’s not about the bike’. The book is a Lance Armstrong autobiography written after he won his second Tour de France (meaning it was before he was discovered to be a drugs cheat). He wrote all about his upbringing and dealing with cancer and his cycling mentality. If I didn’t already know that he took drugs, I wouldn’t believe it having read his book. I thoroughly enjoyed the book. I think knowing the truth makes the whole thing more fascinating, the way he controls his audience, bends their way of thinking, it’s easy to see how he could have fooled almost everyone.

We drove down to Hamilton on the Thursday evening to stay at the University accommodation there. All I can say is that it makes me very thankful for where I live now. The tournament, which began on Friday, is a three-day tournament between 23 teams. We were the second seeds in our group of six. We start out the day well winning our first two games and then we play the top seed after lunch. We go down early and don’t quite manage to claw it back in the end. Winning the last game of the day and the first on Saturday morning, both relatively comfortably, we hold our group seeding and are due to play Marvellous DC in our round of 16. For the winner, a place in the quarter finals, for the loser, relegation to playing for 9th. We played the best we have ever played in the first 10 points and go 6-4 up. They then call a time out and this proved fatal for us. They went on to win 15-8 as they manage to bail themselves out on a number of occasions with big receivers taking down risky hucks.

In frisbee tournaments, teams play out for their final standing so our next game would determine if we would be in the 9-12 bracket or 13-16 bracket. We were playing the tournament hosts, Hammertron, but this did not phase us. We started well and we were scoring easily when disaster struck for me. I was sprinting to catch a disc which was put up a little earlier than I had anticipated so I suddenly hit the accelerator. As I did this I felt a sharp pain in my left hamstring. Torn. I was almost in the endzone at this point and with the next three steps I actually caught the frisbee for the goal before lying down. The physio tells me that having the presence of mind to actually catch the frisbee after tearing my hamstring would suggest that it’s not as bad as I think. I get ice on it straight away, compress it and elevate it. The first 72 hours are most important for recovery. Worlds are a mere six weeks away and getting right for that is the only thing on my mind.

We watch show case games between New Zealand u24 and Australia u24 mixed and women’s teams but I am distracted throughout. On Sunday, I spend the day on the side line, doing my best to support the team by cheering and squeezing the rubber ducks our captain, Jordan, had brought for the team. We won our first game which meant we were in the 9th/10th match against the University 2nd team. A repeat of the spring league match from a week prior. One of our other guys, James, had broken his leg in the showcase game so our team was a little thin on the ground. Still, we started well and stayed in front throughout. To me it didn’t look like the game was close but when I checked the score it was all tied at 13-13. Two very hard-fought points later and some incredible athleticism from the 2nd team and the score is 15-13 and the underdog has taken down the 1st team. Probably a nicer way to finish the tournament overall. We watch the final between Marvellous DC team (the team we lost to in our round of 16) and an Australian team. The Australian team win and we all go home. Not a particularly successful tournament.

I don’t currently have any photos but when I do I’ll be sure to upload them.