Turning back the clock

I started to break my lazy ways tonight, by appearing at the open badminton session that's available at work on Wednesdays. It's a 2 hour session and we have 4 courts available. We're hoping to have coaching again later in the year too. 2 hours is a bit more than I can handle at the moment, as I was quickly feeling the effects of having not done very much over the last couple of years.

Talk about slow ! I quickly felt like I had concrete injected into my legs and could barely jump cos of the ballast around my middle !

Verrry, very rusty. But :-) Having a pretty girl there meant there was someone to show off to, which always keeps me going when otherwise I'd look for a break. Going for a sidestep left caused my left knee to go "crunch", despite the knee supports I use nowadays. (They're more padding than support ;-) Saying "I better stop" after that crunch would have made turning up a bit pointless, so I kept on going. Besides, there was pretty girl on the other side of the net who would have had a disappointed expression on her face if I'd quit then. Can't have one of those appearing :-)

Showing off can be a motivator as well as a vanity thing :-)

The rust showed in the results, my side lost pretty much every game. I'm not too disappointed though, my muscles are complaining heavily now but have survived the night. I've not aggravated the shoulder injury and was feeling relatively free for playing the overhead shots (at medium to low power). It's a missed overhead shot that caused my shoulder problem in the first place.

The muscle memory was coming back near the end of the night, although the memory is expecting a me that's a couple of stone lighter with legs that are in far better shape. I still have the same size of leg but I get the feeling that half of what's there is deadweight instead of useful. That'll improve as I play more. The old saying is "can only improve from here !"

On to other stuff - I'm feeling human again and getting able to move my legs properly :-) Lactic acid build up doesn't do much for the mobility ...

I have the opening to my first story for the fiction blog outlined. It should be a fun setting, I'll have a bubbly girl as the central character, along with a big brute of a half orc who isn't as stupid as he looks. Let's just say the opening will have a god leching over bubblygirl who's in a haystack with someone ... Putting that "g" word in there (and the half orc) kinda gives it away that it'll be a D&D inspired fantasy setting. You can get away with almost as much in those as you can in sci-fi. I prefer sci-fi but it takes longer to explain things in those and I'm not ready for that just yet.

Stories coming soon :-) I have an outline for the first few chapters, including that haystack scene. Let's see where it goes from there ... She'll be avoiding haystacks by the way, a religious experience will settle her down a bit.