Funny how life works out sometimes.

Last year, I stepped down from running SBUL, the South Bay Ultimate League, in order to start MPUL. I had hoped for (and thankfully received) higher level play with MPUL. Similar to the way SFUC is the higher level, experienced league of the City, and SFUL is the beginner friendly, less agro league, I wanted MPUL to be higher level play to SBUL's beginner friendly atmosphere.

And it was spectacularly.

Tragically, I didn't get fields for this year, and MPUL may take a hiatus for the season. If I do get fields, the motto of the season will be, "No shirts, no disc, lots of service.".

But I digress.

SBUL was supposed to be run by Troy Wu this year. For some reason, it didn't happen. Instead of fields on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday as in past years, Troy requested (and I didn't notice on the application, so I, too am at fault here) Monday, Wednesday and Friday, which SBUL received. Ooops.

And then he disappeared.

As near as I can tell, he talked to Lou. He talked to Mike Kenny. He talked a lot to Nell. But then he just disappeared. When push came to shove, the league didn't get started and Nell called Bharat in a panic asking for help. Bharat called me and dumped the task on me. So, here I am, back getting SBUL going again. Not where I wanted to be. Not at all. Lost a day dealing with SBUL last night and all of today.

I went down to San Jose Parks and Recreation, Fields Reservations today to pay for the fields. They are twice as expensive as last year, due to budget cuts and a city/state mandate for all programs to fully pay for themselves. Hal Spangenberg is pretty cool. Especially for someone that I'm sure gets a lot of crap dumped on him everyday.

So, SBUL will happen this year at least. That's one league. Now to get the other one going.

Kris is hosting FICA, a traditional Swedish Friday afternoon happy hour (or something like that) at Oracle tomorrow afternoon. Since he's hosting, we're making cookies for the crew.

Kris and I don't typically do a lot of cooking together, so this has been an adventure. We started off by baking chocolate chip cookies straight from the Nestle Toll House tube. Terribly entertaining.

Tonight is blueberry sugar cookies.

Maybe I'll try risotto tomorrow.

Today was the first ASA in a while for me. I missed Monday's workout because of my Monday migraines. I'll tell you what: migraines suck.

Started with the ladders. We pretty much do our own ladders now, with the standard set of them. I know that G has a few more ladder exercises up his sleeves (note to self: get one or two next workout).

Today was a legs workout to complement Kris' Monday killer upper body workout. We started off with figure 8 runs. We ran around a hula-hoop, then around a ring of cones, in a effort to move the arms quickly to lead the feet into moving quickly. We did 4 of these: 2 clockwise and 2 counterclockwise. The trick of these is to move the arms fast. The feet will move arms are moving fast.

Next we had one legged squats. Using a squat machine that held a weight bar in a vertical track, with locking hooks that stop the bar from dropping, we balanced on one foot and put the back foot on a bench behind us. Placement of the front foot was important, as the front knee wasn't supposed to go over the foot. Dropping into a squat straight was also important to maximize effort on the glute, and not the hamstring.

We did 10 squats per leg, doing both legs. My first set was with the bar only, the second with 10# each side, the third with 5# each side. Three sets of both legs.

Alternating with the three sets of single leg squats was jumping onto boxes. The first set we jumped to high boxes (for Kris that means 3 boxes, for me that was 2), landing both feet, count of 10. The second set was 4 landing both feet, 4 landing right foot, 4 landing left foot; but on a lower box. In my case it was about 4" lower: a 12" box with two step risers on top.

Next we had diagonal hops/bounds. G placed a series of cones about 3-4' apart, offset about 45°. We hopped from one cone to the next, landing on the right foot at the end cone. At the end cone, we paused, sank a bit to hold the position, then exploded forward into a sprint. We did about 3 landing on our right foot. G removed one cone and we did another 3 ending on our left foot, pausing before a sprint.

Out and back sprints were next. Three cones were placed at 8m intervals. Starting at the middle cone, we sprinted to an end cone, turned and sprinted to the other far cone, then turned and sprinted back to the middle cone. We did 8 of these, each time trying to beat our initial sprint time. My first time was 6.47, my fastest (which was incidently my 10th sprint) was 6.18. The competition between the two of us was who could reduce his time each time. Whoever had the least number of time reductions had the bonus of an extra 2 minutes of abs at the end.

Kris lost.

I did an extra couple sprints because we were working on explosiveness (and discussing my lack of). I make the mistake of not exploding, or exploding the wrong direction (pulling in instead of exploding out, for example). I think I'll be practicing in front of the mirror.

Balanced "around the world" hamstring bends was next. With a 10# weight, balancing on your left foot, bend over and touch the ground in front of you, stand up, touch the ground 45° to the left, stand back up, touch the ground 90° to the left, stand up, touch the groun 45° behind you to the left, stand up. Then reverse it, touching the ground and standing up four times. Repeat with the right foot, touching to the right. That's one set. We did three sets. My lower back hurt!

Last was abs. Let me say here: I suck at abs now. My abs are so weak compared to a few months ago! The usual: V ups, bicycles, crunches, catch the ball over the head and throw back (this time on an incline), lower back lifts (with weighted ball!). Yes, once again, my abs sucked.

Emails like this one will often make my day:

Date:    Tue, 19 Oct 2004 20:40:30 -0600
From:  	 Sandie Hammerly 
To:  	 kitt.hodsden
Subject: Thank you...

That's it -- just thank you for all you are doing.... 

It made today.

This is just the migraine from hell! Or, rather, Migraine the 13th, the return of the pain. After being awake for all of two hours, it comes back. Back to bed I go.

Ben and Lisa came over this evening to take care of me. They brought dinner for Kris and me. Lisa rubbed my head. It was nice. We watched the end of game four of the American League Championship Series between the Boston Red Sox and the, blah, NYY.

During the evening, Lisa suggested a possible link between the migraines and the intestinal tract. In particular, my head was hurting much, but the area between my thumb and forefinger, an area linked to lower GI tract in eastern medicine, was quite tense. Of course, most of me was tense. I've tried to link my recent migraines to sleep, but now I'm wondering if I'm looking in the wrong place. Keeping track of diet will help me see if there is a link between the lower GI tract and the migraines. We'll see.