Old Habbits Die Hard

This weekend was another intense sporting weekend comparable to those of my teen years. Friday morning I ran 15 miles for my marathon training. Friday night I had volleyball practice followed by a volleyball tournament on Saturday. This sporting combination in one weekend was once considered lethal, at least to some of my coaches. When I was a freshman in high school, I chose a club volleyball tournament over a high school track meet and my track coach called me the morning of and told me if I didn't get to the meet, I was off the team. I can't remember if that was Mr. Jones of Mr. Miles who made me to collapse into tears that morning cause I knew I would never get to the meet on time. I was terrified I would be kicked off the team and still look back at that phone call as completely as unnecessary and inappropriate.

But the scare tactic worked as track ended up wining out on my event calendar for the next 8 years. It is nice to not have sports ruling my life anymore. In college every quarter, I had to schedule all of my classes around a three hour chunk of time in the afternoon for track practice. It killed my social life for indoor and outdoor season every year. There's a reason our conference track party was one of the most well known parties in the whole school. We worked so hard for so long that when it was finally over, we went absolutely nuts (and got absolutely naked to run a mile relay).

Somehow, now that I'm free after years of sport slavery, I have voluntarily gone back to sacrificing nights out on the town for early morning runs and tournaments. Last night I went to a potluck dinner and everybody left to go out dancing. There was no way after 15 miles and all that volleyball, were my legs gonna dance till dawn. So instead I came home and skyped a few friends. I didn't have my phone numbers with me, so I ended up just calling friends who have their phone numbers posted on facebook. It was a random sample of friends because of that, but I couldn’t have been happier than to have talked to these people.

We ended up loosing both our volleyball games on saturday. We got 4th place over all in the tournament, but Peace Corps took home more trophies than any other department. Our assistant country director got first place in Tennis. Two other male staff members got first and second in the chess tournament and we won the girls soccer tournament. The teams we played in volleyball yesterday were really good. We played well in all of our games and if we had been able to practice together more as a team, we would have been a lot better. Regardless of loosing, I still had an amazing time and everybody is already buzzing about next year. I brought along some of my Lima friends this time to join the cheering ranks. They were really impressed with the size an the intensity of the tournament. It's nice to offer my Lima friends something on wow-scale. It's usually the other way around. I come to Lima as a poor Peace Corps Volunteer and they take me to some fancy country club or event which blows me and my life at site out of the water. I never get to take them any place cool and really wow them.

But they had never been the US embassy before and thought the day was really cool. Every one on the Peace Corps staff wanted to know who my friends were and how I had met them. By the end of the day, Peace Corps had signed up my friends to give microfinance talks to the incoming business training group and sit on a panel discussion at the up coming Close of Service conference.

Now that I am an adult and don't have to let coaches who believe the sun and moon rise for high school sports (don't even get me started on high school football), I am able to enjoy sports for what they are. Recreation. There are nights before runs that I have to sacrifice going out, but in turn I get to take my social life to my sports. I really think my Lima friends will remember the day they went to the volleyball tournament at the US embassy in Peru more than they would any random night going out and dancing. I know I will.