Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Endurance Running

It was the usual Friday evening when we had collected on court for practise. After a tiring 2 hour work out, with exercises with and without the ball, someone thought aloud, asking what it is that we would be doing the next morning in our first proper morning practise session. First proper in the sense that it was the first holiday that we would wake up in the morning, and do something productive. Immediately, almost as if it came naturally, the think tank of our team suggested an idea. We would aptly name it Endurance running. Now, for an average sportsman what we do may not be termed as endurance running, but then again we are students who play, not players who study like the ones who are regular favourites at tournaments. That said, for an average student in our college, what we do is of quite some magnitude. Endurance running, if we were professionals would have probably been a run that lasted say 10 rounds around the football field. That would be 10*700 metres = 7 kilometres. But as always we do things with a twist, a twist that makes getting tired so much fun, you don't stop even if its completely exhausting. What the aforementioned think tank suggested was a really nice break up of running. First a warm up for 4 rounds, not the usual rounds around the field but again with a twist. The twist being everyone runs in a straight line and at every turn, the last guy in the line overtakes the first guy. This can be really hard, but also is fun. I suck at it, but then that's a different story altogether. Right, so that was warm-up. Then there is the best part. To put it simply it was five 100 metre sprints. Then four 200 metre sprints. Three 300 metre strides. Two 400 metre strides and a final round the pitch 700 metre jog again. Doing the math, it comes up to 6.5 kilometres of running, subtract a little for laziness and cutting of the track, also some inconsistencies. 6 kilometres of running could never be made this interesting. As we finished, we were barely able to walk and carry our arses back to the block. Thankfully as some sort of reprieve, Captain Camel Calcutta and the aforementioned think tank decided to treat us breakfast. Benefits of hard work you could say. That rounded up a week that was never short of anything - morning practises, evening games, 2 people quitting the team and eventually coming back realising that the pros of staying in would always outweigh the cons if you stayed out. Oh, did I forget to mention, I love this game, and this team.