Pulled Quadricep

So Subrata and I head over for a night of ultimate frisbee. The field - in San Jose - is pretty nice. Well-lit, flat, so far we haven't had problems with standing water, though we're only just entering the rainy season right now. (It's pretty weird for me, actually. Temperatures in the 50s and rain make me think "Hallowe'en is coming up". But here in California, it means Christmas is around the corner.)

So yeah, it was probably in the low-to-mid 50s when we arrived. During the course of the evening our breath started misting, so that seems about right. I made a point of doing some stretching beforehand. I've always been pretty bad about remembering to stretch, but I've never had any serious problems with it before. I've gotten those awful cramps in my calf, but with one exception those only occurred at night (hell of a way to wake up), and I never connected them with exercise. But now I'm over 30, so I'm trying to take these things a little more seriously.

Subrata and I started warming up by throwing a frisbee around. We'd been throwing it for about 15 minutes - it's a surprisingly good way to warm up, and I felt pretty toasty by this point - when one of Subrata's throws got away from me. I ran after it for about five steps and flagged it down.

And - ow! - I felt something twinge in my left thigh.

We threw a few more tosses and then I had to stop. I explained what happened, and as time went on it became clear that I'd pulled my quadricep. Trying to stretch it out gently helped a little, but if I wasn't gentle then it hurt like heck. If I just left it alone, then it was a dull pain - annoying, but not by any means unbearable.

I rested for about ten minutes, and then tested it by running a lap around the field. It wasn't exactly happy, but it seemed to hold up okay. I figured I'd give it a try, and take lots of rest. We had about 16 people on our team show up, and we only field 7 at a time, so rest was not a problem.

We play two games, each against a different team, in an evening. It soon became clear that I just wasn't going to be able to go all-out, either endurance-wise or for top-speed sprints. My leg wouldn't let me. So I had to play a little smarter to keep people from getting away from me. On two points I covered a guy who seemed pretty experienced and was making helpful comments on my defense. I do mean helpful, really - he had clearly sized me up as less than an expert, and made encouraging sounds when I did things right, and some suggestions about how to handle some things better. Plus, I was mostly able to keep up with him, so it was a pretty good deal.

Well, there isn't a tragic upshot to the story: I got through the first game okay, but only played two points in the second game before my leg starting telling me it had had enough. I fought down my impulse to push it for "one more point", and changed into my sneakers and put my jacket on and watched the rest of the fun. My leg was unhappy enough that I was actually limping slightly.

Like I said, I've never done anything like this before. I'm trying to think of ways to avoid it next time. Subrata suggested another stretch I can try. I think I will also try starting my warm-up (after the stretching) by talking a lap around the field, and then jogging a lap, to get my legs more warmed up. Hopefully that will help.

As long as I don't end up pulling a groin muscle. Subrata says that that's really nasty, and lingers for a long time. Ugh.

You know, being over thirty kind of sucks in this way.

Have I mentioned that almost everything in the valley closes around 10 pm? I phoned several restaurants between Apple and the playing fields today and all of them close at 10. Ultimate usually lasts until nearly 9:30 (that's when they turn the lights out), so we have to rush to find somewhere to eat, or else go up to Mountain View to Frankie, Johnny and Luigi's, which is open late. It's pretty annoying. (Sure, we could always do Denny's, but I'd be more inclined to just buy hamburger meat and have Subrata over to my place after the game.)

So we went to Max's afterwards, sliding in about ten minutes before closing. Max's is a chain in the area which specializes in large quantities of food, and very good desserts. Their food is good but not great, which I guess is what you expect from a quantity-oriented restaurant. I had a corned beef sandwich. I wasn't hungry enough to have dessert, though. Too much food!