Racquetball
Jun. 13th, 2008 11:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
scottahillI first played racquetball in college, where I took it for a PE credit. Turned out that I was pretty good at it...for the first 15 minutes maybe. After that I was exhausted, which made me cranky, which made me a terrible opponent. The teacher said I should do some endurance training, but...duh...racquetball WAS my endurance training. :) After the class I decided I wouldn't be a very good racquetball partner (I have to aim for just the right skill level too: good enough that they can hit the ball most of the time, but not so good that they're going to be firing 90mph balls at me consistently). But because racquetball has the nice feature that the ball comes back to you every time, one can easily play solo, and I've done that off and on since, whenever I had access to a racquetball court. It's the only activity I know where I will willingly drive myself into a sweat so fast: if I try running, I give up quickly; bicycling, I might get off and walk or pick a different route; but that little blue ball has my number.
I haven't played for a couple years, since I was a post-doc at Northeastern at fact (last time I had free access to a court), but since I've gained about 20 pounds since Miriam was born (Jen, it should be noted, is back to her pre-pregnancy weight) I decided it was time to find a court. I thought I'd go play at SMU, but it turns out there's an athletic club just down the road with courts (it should be noted that not every gym has racquetball courts, so they can be hard to find). It won't be a convenient location when we move in July (I have mentioned that, right?) but for the next month it is ideal. They wanted $70 for a month's membership or $10/day. I'm thinking I'll probably only go once a week, so I'm going with the $10/day. I went for the first time today.
I've been building it up in my mind for a couple weeks now, so I was worried I'd hate it once I got there, but it was indeed as fun as I remember, and I was still pretty good...for the first 10 minutes. :) I played on for about 50 minutes, with pauses, though: probably the best workout I've had for months if not years. One thing that didn't work: I was looking forward to using my iPod while playing, because I was never able to listen to music before because I had CD players and tape players which don't work well when you're jumping around. However, I found the music to be a distraction rather than motivation. Interesting, that.
I don't know if I mentioned that we are moving over to Irving (other side of the city) in July, so we'll be closer to work (it's only a short-term situation; we're moving to Toledo in the winter). It wouldn't be worth the drive to come over here to play racquetball, but it turns out I won't have to: the city of Irving has recreation centers, and a couple of them have racquetball courts, which you can access with a yearly membership fee of $25. Very sweet. :)
I haven't played for a couple years, since I was a post-doc at Northeastern at fact (last time I had free access to a court), but since I've gained about 20 pounds since Miriam was born (Jen, it should be noted, is back to her pre-pregnancy weight) I decided it was time to find a court. I thought I'd go play at SMU, but it turns out there's an athletic club just down the road with courts (it should be noted that not every gym has racquetball courts, so they can be hard to find). It won't be a convenient location when we move in July (I have mentioned that, right?) but for the next month it is ideal. They wanted $70 for a month's membership or $10/day. I'm thinking I'll probably only go once a week, so I'm going with the $10/day. I went for the first time today.
I've been building it up in my mind for a couple weeks now, so I was worried I'd hate it once I got there, but it was indeed as fun as I remember, and I was still pretty good...for the first 10 minutes. :) I played on for about 50 minutes, with pauses, though: probably the best workout I've had for months if not years. One thing that didn't work: I was looking forward to using my iPod while playing, because I was never able to listen to music before because I had CD players and tape players which don't work well when you're jumping around. However, I found the music to be a distraction rather than motivation. Interesting, that.
I don't know if I mentioned that we are moving over to Irving (other side of the city) in July, so we'll be closer to work (it's only a short-term situation; we're moving to Toledo in the winter). It wouldn't be worth the drive to come over here to play racquetball, but it turns out I won't have to: the city of Irving has recreation centers, and a couple of them have racquetball courts, which you can access with a yearly membership fee of $25. Very sweet. :)
