This was a week of almosts. But the one almost I didn’t have was hitting my weekly mileage! I went above my weekly mileage goal for the first time since the beginning of January and only the third time overall since I started training back in October.
Sunday – 11 v 11 soccer, 4.8 miles AND pick-up soccer, 3.12 miles. I subbed for a co-ed 11 v 11 team – I actually played with a few of these guys a couple of years ago, but I stopped playing in the league because I had other commitments and while it’s technically a co-ed league, you only have to have 2 women on the field and if you don’t have 2 women, your team is just allowed to play 9 v 11 instead. At that point, it’s not really a “co-ed” game, now is it? Either way, a couple of the guys I play with on Tuesday nights had asked me to come out and there were 3 of us that rotated in and out of the game. This league is also different in that it’s actually 45 minute halves (all of the other 11 v 11 leagues I’m in are 35 minutes) – 10 minutes doesn’t seem like a long time until it’s tacked onto the end of a 35 minute half! Most of the game I played defense, but when I came back in during the first half, I came in at midfield and I got my first almost of the week. I was running down the back side with one of our players controlling the ball on the other side of the field. I made a run towards the goal and he made a perfect pass in the air, right to me. In full stride, I headed the ball towards the goal and it went upper 90 just outside the left post. I almost scored on a header!
Sunday was such a beautiful day that when I finished the game, I went home to grab some food and then went back out to play pick-up in the afternoon. I definitely didn’t do as much running as I normally do at pick-up but it was nice to be outside with the warm sun for a change.
Monday – 7 v 7 soccer, 1.91 miles. As I rolled out of bed Monday morning, I almost couldn’t move! As it turns out, playing soccer twice on Sunday wasn’t a smart idea. My knee has been bothering me after my really long runs and after too much exertion of any kind so the 7.9 miles I put in playing soccer on Sunday did not help my cause. Luckily, I was able to ice my knee and elevate it throughout the day on Monday, so by game time, I was feeling much better. Part of the problem is just getting it stretched and warmed up enough – once I get into a game or on my run, I rarely notice it. This was the start of our playoff season – we were playing a team that only 1 girl, so they had to play down a person for the entire game. We played two 25 minute halves which ended in a 0-0 tie, followed by a 5 minute overtime which still ended in a 0-0 tie, which meant: penalty kicks! Since this is a co-ed league, for the penalty kicks, it had to rotate guy-girl-guy-girl to take the shots. Both teams scored on their first shot. 1-1. Then, it was my turn. I haven’t scored on a penalty kick since high school, but I went back to the strategy that worked for me then and put one in! The girl from the other team was stopped by our keeper. 2-1. Both teams put in their next 2 shots. 4-3. We just needed our fifth kicker to score to win the game – and he did! We’re moving on to the semi-finals next week!
Tuesday – 7 v 7 soccer, 2.76 miles. Technically this was supposed to be 7 v 7 soccer, but we only had 5 people show up from our team. The team we were playing was nice enough to play with only 6 players so that it was 5 v 6 the entire game (they didn’t have to do that). We played with 4 in the field plus our keeper, which meant A LOT of running! We scored a quick goal in the beginning of the game and never really looked back. In the first half, one of our guys was coming up the field with the ball and he was drawing two of the defenders close to him, so I made a run through the middle with another defender trailing me and he made the perfect pass through all of the defenders to my feet and I almost had a goal – I flubbed my kick and it went wide. The final score was 4-3 and we never trailed during the game.
Wednesday – 7 v 7 soccer, 2.62 miles. We definitely played better than we did last week, but our team still seems to be missing some of the cohesiveness that we were gaining at the beginning of the season. We almost won in a very high scoring game, but we ended up losing 8-7. Our last regular season game is Wednesday against the #2 team in the league, so it will definitely be a challenge.
Thursday – off. I almost got to play soccer, but the weather in Charlotte had other plans – it was about 40 and rainy starting around 4:00 and the temperature was only going to drop, so I made the decision to cancel our games for the night and the women’s league will just have to start their regular season games next week instead!
Friday – off
How did your week go? Did you hit your goals?