Life Before Ultimate

"I had a job before this,
I had a job before this,
Ultimately, it was that job that drove me into this."
- Gord Downie (New Orleans is Sinkin')

Despite the valiant efforts of various individuals and organizations, ultimate is one of those sports that people usually take up later in life. Having run across numerous former soccer players on the ultimate pitch, it seems that soccer is the most common feeder sport for ultimate. It might just be the fact that I usually get stuck marking tall guys, but I can attest to an impressive number of former basketball and hockey players who now consider ulty as their preferred sport.

Although I dabbled in basketball in my younger days, my background is in running. As mentioned in my first post, ultimate was originally meant to be a social form of cross-training since group runs bored me to death. Not only was it difficult to find someone in a group run who ran the right pace, it was nearly impossible to find an equally quick runner who didn't blabber on about some boring topic (including running). In contrast, ultimate players, even those of different abilities, tend to be very interesting individuals with fascinating lives outside of ulty.

Even though I was a runner before I started ultimate in 2006, I stopped caring about running in 1997. While on the University of Ottawa cross-country team, I had a coach who didn't understand the difference between an elite and an intermediate athlete. Without dropping names, this coach worked with numerous Olympians, groomed high school runners into scholarship athletes, and made the Ottawa Lions into a distance running force in the club track scene in Canada. The only problem being, he thought his brilliant workouts would work for everyone. The result is that the "also rans" on the U of O team would be so burnt out from practices that we'd have nothing left for meets and races. Amusingly, my practice pace of about 4 min/km ended up being my race pace for distances of 4km through 10km by the end of 1997.

In 1998, after I decided that returning to the Gee-Gees Cross-Country team wasn't a smart option, I ran a half marathon with very little training, and ended up with a stress fracture in my right foot. Although I was happy with my time (1:45ish), the Gloucester half-marathon was the last race I remember "racing". My dad got into running around that time, so when my stress fracture healed, I'd complete a couple of races a year that he entered, but couldn't tell you what my times were, or how I finished, or how big the fields were…cause they just didn't matter.

Since I started playing ultimate, I've ran…two races. For a guy who used to run 10 – 20 races a year (including track and cross-country), cutting down to an average of one a year might seem a bit drastic. Honestly, I'm much happier this way. I'm not getting up at ungodly hours (anything before 8am is crazy) just to outrun a bunch of sweaty people. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against runners, I'm just happier being an ulty player.

Last weekend, I ran the Nordion 10km for the first time since 2000 (had to check that on Sportstats). What training went into my 10km performance? Hmmm, outside of ultimate, I do try to run twice a week (4km – 8km), and do some stationary biking. Why did I enter the 10km? Much easier answer, work subsidized the entry fee for it and I wanted to meet some of my athletic colleagues. The free dryfit shirt and pasta lunch didn't hurt either. How did I do? Surprisingly well – 44:10 chip time.

I had mentioned to some co-workers on Friday that I'd try to run under 45 minutes since that seemed like a semi-impressive/respectable time. My big fear was running into any former gee-gees or high school team-mates, who would have inevitably pushed me out of my comfort zone. Instead, as luck would have it, the 45 minute pace buddy lined up directly in front of me. So I simply chased him down for the first kilometer (FYI – rather than the clusterfuck start, the worst part about the Nordion is zig-zagging your way through slowpokes who started too far up for the first 3km) and then got bored at his pace, and passed him never to see him again (the idiot missed his 45 minute goal pace). I'll admit, I considered quitting around 6km, but the crowd from 7km onward really got me energized and seemed to appreciate the fact I was passing runner after runner while most racers were dying.

The worst part of the race, nudging out the clusterfuck start and zig-zagging, was the cramp 5 minutes after I finished. I got my chip off, picked up my finisher's medal (I think my nephew will enjoy that), and had some orange slices and bananas before exiting Confederation Park onto Laurier. While stepping off the sidewalk, I got the worst calf cramp I've ever experienced. I ended up stretching it out for two minutes using the shoulder of a friendly police officer, before it subsided enough for me to walk. The police officer was horrified that he could actually see my calf muscle contracted. Glad I didn't let him talk me into going to the St.John's ambulance people though, since the calf was fine once I stretched out the cramp.

Although my competitive racing days are definitely behind me, I'll probably try to enter the odd race for a good cause, or ones with later start times. I don't really miss the running community in Ottawa, since I find the ulty community more engaging. Plus, I run plenty playing ulty four times a week. Until next time, happy hucking!