somebody up there...

is giggling like a crazed hyena at me right now. has to be. there's no other explanation for the ridiculousness of the past few days. let me explain. on saturday i played in a little informal 6v6 soccer tournament. now let's remember that i've played soccer literally my whole life, at times at a very high level. and i've never been injured during a game. well... here's how it went: we were playing against a local high school, and i received the ball with my back to the goal about 15 yards out. i twisted around, made a move to lose my defender, and pushed off my left foot and was one step from finishing a marvelous goal, when... someone kicked me on my left calf. i went down immediately, cussing the nastiness of the foul. as i got up and turned around to see who committed it, i then had a full realization of what happened. see, nobody was behind me. and when i got up and put weight on my left foot, i went straight back down. the "kick" i thought i received to my calf was actually my calf muscle pulling. owwww! in all these years, i've never pulled a calf muscle. i know, i know, i'm getting old. i shouldn't be playing against these younguns. bah! for the record, my team, featuring only players 30 and older went 4-1, only losing (7-5) to Butler University, who was ranked in the top 20 in division 1 soccer last season. hah, we showed those high schoolers! well, for 3 1/2 games, anyway...

but wait, it gets better!

so, saturday nite, i'm sitting at home at 11:30PM watching the opening stage of the tour de france, with my leg on ice, and i noticed it. it was like a little tickle in the back of my throat. it was the type of tickle that forewarns me that i'm about to get a sore throat, fever, etc.... hmm. no way. maybe i'm just imagining it.

fast forward to sunday morning.

nope, not imagining it. throat's killing me, and i'm either freezing cold or boiling hot. are you kidding me? it's freaking JULY! who gets sick in JULY??!! so now, not only am i limping around, i'm also achy and lifeless, popping advils like tic tacs, and walking around like some sort of drugged out quasimoto. to make a long story short, i finally went to the doctor yesterday, and sure enough i have strep. i got the requisite ass-shot and i feel alot better today. on another good note, the calf feels way better than i thought it would already. i can almost walk without limping. i hope to be back running next week.

andrew and nathan did ok in their mile race on the 4th. andrew wasn't feeling well, but still pulled out a 6:33. i really think that with any kind of formal training program, he could be under 6:00 in no time. nathan finished at 6:42. the good news is that they both beat darrin, who ran a 6:47. the poor guy missed 3rd in his age group by 2 seconds. i knew he shoulda tripped that guy... the better news is that because i was sick and have a pulled muscle, there was no way that i could have run it and been humiliated again by my boys! ha. i knew there was some good to all of this.

anyway, that's what's been going on here. injuries and sickness. as good as the calf feels already, i should be running sometime next week, and i should still be on target for the races i want to do later this summer.