10-23-17 (Monday) HY: TCF + Pickle-Ball.

10-23-17 (Monday) HY: TCF + Pickle-Ball.

Finally!! Got some regularity back!!!

It has been about three weeks since John and I last played Pickle-Ball, so I was anxious to get back out on the court.  So anxious that I got there about 20 minutes early so after getting my stretching and warm up done, I was able to do a long series of Flows traveling the distance of a court.  The odd thing is that on the very first Flow, I sort of lost track of what I was doing and didn't know what moves I was connecting to each other.  But somehow I ended up in the right place.  From then on, I was able to focus and all the Flows from there were on point.  It is really nice to have a big open private place to Flow.  The lines that are at my shoulder width are a huge bonus so I can keep my feet on track.

We got right to it when John arrived.  Our warm up was good, so we began the match right away.  I was able to jump out ahead and stay there for the whole game.  There were times when I sputtered a bit, but I never relinquished the lead. Once or twice John came back to tie, but I was able to rebuff those advances and take the first game.  A lot of good shots from both ends.  We were also able to play with the actual rules.  Up until today, we always started serving from the deuce court.  But a bit ago, I asked my brother and he told me the real decided of service, even or odd points.  If I have even points, I serve from the deuce side.  Odd, from the Ad side.  Easy, but make a big difference in terms of game flow.

We switched sides and resumed the match.  This time, John jumped out ahead and I just couldn't catch up.  I got up to tie him a couple times, then promptly fell behind again.  Not until I tied at 10-10 did I break through and take the lead.  I fell into a tie one more time, but then I charged to the victory.  There was one great point we played, that I eventually lost, that I was hustling hard chasing down balls literally left and right, but I just couldn't put it away.  Good game.

The third game, I again, jumped out to a huge lead, then got stuck at 14-3.  Then John made his move and fought his way back to 14-11, but it was too little to late.  I was lucky to take that game as well.  This is my very first "No Excuses" game sweep of John since we started playing a year and a half ago.  I swept him once before, but it was when John had just gotten back from vacation to the UK and still had a lot of Jet Lag.  So I don't count that sweep as a real Sweep.  But this one, we were both on top of our games, the temperature and conditions were perfect.  No excuses today.  I got my 3-Game Sweep!  I was winded and my legs were feeling it, but I was happy.

In the end, I burned a satisfying 1200+kcals.  Unfortunately, we're gong to have to miss next week because of scheduling, but we'll be back in two weeks.  From that point on, we will not have any scheduling problems or anomalies until January.