Tag: soccer

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Thank God for physical therapy tomorrow

Because I have some questions.

I’ve been going to PT because of a strained rotator cup in my left shoulder (compliments of the car rollover). My next appointment is tomorrow, so I’ll be able to tell the therapist what happened this afternoon and maybe he’ll have some ideas. I sure don’t.

I was playing soccer—absolutely gorgeous outside, 73 degrees and sunny—even though I’m still a little beat up. My knee is okay, but I feel an occasional tweak when I twist the wrong way. I move, the tweak goes away, the game continues, no big deal. This wasn’t a tweak. I don’t know what it was. I do know that there was no popping or tearing sensation, so while it might be sore, I’m not worried about severe damage.

It was almost the end of the game, I had been running around all over the field and was sprinting forward to try and keep the ball from going out of bounds. You all know how your legs move when you run: push off with one leg, bring your other thigh up and extend your lower leg, put your foot down on the ground to push yourself forward again, repeat as necessary.

This time, I pushed off with my left leg, brought my right thigh up and started to extend my leg. Then my knee reached about a 120 degree angle and said, “That’s far enough!” It just stopped moving. Momentum + no foot to land on = Shawn falling to his arms and knees + panicky teammates.

It took me a moment to recover (no screaming and writhing around in pain, thankfully), then I got up and hobbled a couple steps to reach the sideline. From there, it was a long walk around the field to the other side. When I got there, people were asking me what happened and I didn’t know anything beyond the fact that I fell.

After talking to the physical therapist, I hope I’ll have an answer. An answer and an assurance that it won’t happen again. If not, I might have to avoid what I did after soccer this afternoon: bowling. I opted out this time because of my knee, but if it could lock up at any time (say, while I’m striding up toward the lane with a 16-pound ball attached to my fingers), I might have to worry about more than just a strained rotator cuff.

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Extreme weather

It was a bit chilly when I headed out the front door this morning. Like -6 degrees chilly. At 9:20, so the air had already had time to warm up from -18 last night. Still, a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do when his soccer game is scheduled for 10:00. (Thankfully, my car started after such a cold night, which also allowed me to do what I hadta do.)

Yep, it was game #2 of the season and I was ready to play the first half again. I’ll probably wait a few more weeks before playing a full game since I want to work my way back slowly. A full game minus time for substitutions, of course. Even if I was at full-strength, I ain’t that crazy.

So I was back on the field, felt another weird tweak or two when I moved the wrong way, but I felt better running around this time. I also felt better after the game—a few hours later, I could walk up and down the stairs without a severe limp. I think I had the right idea last week. My left quad hurt a lot; so did my right knee. The patellar tendon is connected to the quadriceps, so instead of having a sore right quad, the pressure ended up over the front of my kneecap instead. Regardless, they both feel better than last week, so that probably means my body is getting used to playing again.

[As a side-note, the game was tied 0-0 at halftime and we ended up losing 2-1. Obviously, I was the difference-maker. Obviously.]

This afternoon, I watched NBC’s World of Adventure Sports. Fortunately, the segment on the Abu Dhabi Adventure Challenge ran first. (Not surprisingly, that portion of the show was sponsored in part by the Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority.) Not so fortunately, Justin’s TV time was minimal at best. Damn.

It focused on each section of the race, brutal conditions on the course (aside from all the heat and sand, one day on the kayaks was cancelled due to winds over 30 knots), the winning team from Australia and a former Olympian who was racing with one of the other U.S. teams. The winning team, well, they finished first in every section of the race for their fourth consecutive overall victory of the Adventure Challenge, so you can’t really blame NBC for showing a lot of footage of them. As for the Olympian, she seemed cool, but she wasn’t racing with us, so meh…

Toward the end of the segment, it showed a quick flash of WEDALI signing out at the finish line and then a clip of the Olympian again. As she stood there, I looked to her right and my eyes got really big: “That guy looks just like me!” Then Molly, Justin’s wife, came onscreen and gave the Olympian a hug. I’ll have to take another look, but if the guy had #13 on his team vest, it means my little brother and I look a lot more similar than I thought. If you ignore the eight inch height and big weight difference, that is.

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A new year, a new season

After ACL replacement surgery in April, I was determined to come back and start playing soccer again in 2011. Mission accomplished.

The season actually started on the 9th, but because our team got registered a little late, we had a bye week, giving me an extra seven days to exercise and prepare. (Yay for working out with the Wii!) This afternoon, I went to a presentation in Minneapolis, had dinner with Grandma, then went to the soccer game at 7:15. By the time I got to the field, I honestly wasn’t sure whether I’d be playing or not.

Exercising on the Wii may have helped me build up some long-lost muscle, but the workout programs available don’t provide much in the way of sprinting and kicking. I was intent on getting to the field, jump a few times, run, sprint, kick a ball… whether I was going to play or not depended on how much my knee hurt or how stiff it felt after putting it through that kind of stress. No point in suffering extreme amounts of pain and having to sit out for another couple months just to get on the field for 10-15 minutes.

I’m not sure if I’ve explained this before, but “knee pain” has nothing to do with the replaced ligament. That’s healed just fine. The pain is above and below my kneecap and rears its ugly head when I squat down, jump, etc. (I’m assuming it’s because the replacement ligament used to be the middle third of my patellar tendon, which stretches from the quad over the kneecap to the shin.) Thus, the problem is probably that the tendon isn’t at full strength yet. That’s my guess, anyway—all I know for sure is that’s where my knee hurts.

Anyway, after running around and taking a couple shots on goal, I felt okay (relatively speaking). There were a few small flashes of pain, but it wasn’t enough to keep me off the field tonight. I ended up playing… probably 10-15 minutes. I started the first half, subbed out a couple times, and survived the first 25 minutes of the game without too much trouble. For safety’s sake, I spent the second half on the sideline. (When the other team scored a goal, I felt a familiar urge to put my gear on and get back out on the field, but this is one injury I don’t want to aggravate any more than I already have.)

When the game was over and we had secured a 5-3 victory, I walked out onto the field and shook hands with the other team, walked back to the sideline and didn’t feel too bad with my knee covered by a thin layer of Biofreeze. However, that not-feeling-too-bad went away after an hour or two.

Now it hurts when I try to lift and straighten my leg… well, there are a handful of ways to move my leg that hurt at the moment, but lying here in bed with ice on my knee, I really don’t care. Pain is temporary—I’ll feel better after a day or two—but playing soccer again… well, it’s not pride, so it’s not forever. Still, being on the soccer field after so long has made the pain seem a lot more tolerable.

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Back online

Well, that wasn’t as ugly as I thought it would be. The person who’s running this site from her server switched to a new web host and everything was back to normal (or as normal as my blog gets) within an hour. It doesn’t look like anything was deleted during the hacking process, the person just messed with the main page and the administrative dashboard. Awesome.

On another note, I’m sure most of you have heard about the Metrodome collapse, which forced the Vikings/Giants games out of Minneapolis and into Detroit. It gets worse. The Vikes have another home game against Chicago on Monday night and they might be able to use the University of Minnesota’s football stadium, but in doing so, it would force the Bears to find an alternate site to prepare for the game. An alternate site like, oh, I don’t know, the Gophers’ practice football facility.

Remember how I was talking about all of the soccer games being cancelled last Sunday due to all the snow? They were supposed to be pushed ahead a week to Dec. 17th, the day before the Vikings game and likely a good day for the teams to practice. What I may not have mentioned was where our soccer league is playing this season: the Gophers’ practice football facility. Guess who’s gonna have priority and who’s probably gonna get screwed?

Hopefully, we can work something out. Mad Dogs are currently scheduled to play at 1:00 that afternoon, but “last minute changes are a possibility.” *sigh* I hope I can see my team play one more game this year. If not, that’ll be one more reason for me to hope that the Bears lose by a bajillion points. That’s right, I said “a bajillion”. No mercy for those who steal our soccer fields, bitches!

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This weather is no laughing matter!

As it turned out, the voice on the CSC weather line was very calm and collected when I called at 10:00 this morning to let me know that all morning soccer games had been cancelled, but the afternoon games were still on. Then I called around 1:00 and everything was cancelled and all of the games will be played on Dec. 19th instead.

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it on here, but I’m aiming to start getting back on the field at the beginning of 2011. Mom asked if I wanted to play in the game today—I answered simply: “Noooooooo.” I’m being realistic, especially since I’ve found out between using the Wii and shoveling snow this morning/afternoon that my right leg is still significantly weaker than my left. I didn’t think about it before, but when my right quad got sore or tired, I’d shift my weight to the left without thinking about it, something I’ve been doing for the past nine months.

And speaking of shoveling, we have an awesome neighbor named Rich Carron who is awesome. And when I write “awesome”, I mean AWESOME. Dad and I let Mother Nature do its dirty work yesterday because we live across the street from a lake. The wind blows across the lake, picking up velocity and throwing snow around wherever the hell it wants. If we shovel some away, the wind will replace it, quite possibly with the snow you just shoveled away. Mother Nature sucks.

It was still windy walking outside today, but we weren’t getting any more snow, so it was time to go to work. Mind you, not all of the house and driveway looked that bad because of the drifting. I looked at the upwind side of the Ford Explorer and thought it looked worse when we got hit with 14″ of snow earlier this winter. (Or is it technically still fall?) It didn’t look that bad until I got to the other side and saw snow snuggled all the way up to the level of the hood. On an SUV.

As I was clearing off the front steps, that’s when awesome Rich Carron showed up. In a Bobcat. He cleared off the front part of the driveway, along the sides, made some extra space in front of the mailbox and moved everything away from the fire hydrant. He got rid of hundreds of pounds of snow. Hundreds and hundreds. There are now five-foot piles of snow stretching at least ten yards down the block on both sides of the road. (Sure, some was already there, but it hadn’t been packed down by dumping more snow on top of it with a Bobcat.)

I have no idea how much time and effort he saved us in those ten minutes of work… heck, maybe it was just five… but however much it was, he is still AWESOME. So thanks, Rich. You’re a back saver.

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Games cancelled due to bwa ha ha ha haaaaa!

I’ve missed most of our Mad Dogs’ soccer games this season because of Mind Over Matt, but the final one is coming up at 3:00 tomorrow afternoon. I’m planning to attend since we play indoors during the winter, but the weather conditions aren’t really conducive to people driving to the field.

Cities Sports Connection, the group that organizes the league, has a “weather line” that you can call to find out if games have been cancelled. It’s probably used most often when there’s rain and lightning during an outdoor season, but Hennepin County (where the field is) shut down their plows earlier because blowing snow was obscuring the roads, 1/3 of city buses got stuck driving their routes and a few hundred accidents were reported during the day.

I wonder if I call the weather line tomorrow, will I hear a message saying games will be played, games will be cancelled or a voice saying, “You seriously think we might be playing today?! Bwa ha ha ha haaaaa!”