Table tennis

One of the games I like and may be I play it well (it is always relative) is the the table tennis. During winter I play once a week or once in 2 weeks with my friends. almost each Sunday night we meet at my neighbor's house, drink wine and play doubles. This winter season ends with a table tennis tournament in the small sport's hall in our neighborhood.
And this tournament was just the past weekend. 10 men and 4 women fighting to win the small "golden" plate statue. We were divided into 2 groups of 5, where we played in the table. After that there were 2 semi-finals, the match for the 3rd place and the final. I was able to win all matches in my group, losing just 2 sets (we played for 3 wins). In the semi-final I played against my friend that I know from doubles, so we knew each other and it was quite easy for me to win that match. However the final match was real drama. The player - Lukas was his name - was not from our village and I wanted to keep the victory "at home".


The first set, good services at both sides, very close score. The end of set were better for him - 0:1.
The second set, I have found out how to return on his service, I was leading from the beginning and - 1:1
The third set- Lukas has also found how to return my service. We kept to play very evenly till the end of the set and ... I lost - 1:2
The forth set. Again very dramatic set. The set is supposed to end at 11 points, but the difference must be min. 2 point. So we played 11:11, 12:12 and - I won 14:12 and the score was 2:2.
The final set - Lukas seemed to be mentally down (maybe because he is younger?) and the last set was easy for me 11:4. And yesss, I'm the winner!

Biking in the rain

Two weeks ago, I have started with biking to and from work. It is quite a long distance (29km = 18 miles), so in the beginning I bike just once a week. This Tuesday it was the third time this year. Next week or maybe after my 1/2 marathon race, I will add more days per week and "officially" start the triathlon training.

This Tuesday it was good exercise of how to bike in the rain and get used to it. Everything was fine in the morning, but I forgot to look at the forecast and at 5pm, when I left work, it just started to rain. "Hm, I don't wait, it could be only worse later", I said to myself. After 5 minutes I was completely wet and started to be cold as well. It may have been the first time I hated downhills and enjoyed uphills - just to get warm. The profile offers me a lot of both:


Exactly following the Murphy's law, it stopped raining just when I arrived home. I was looking for a warm bath, but before that I needed to do a favor to my bike. My path is just partially on streets and more often I follow forest trails. And after the rain, there is a lot of mud everywhere and especially on me and my bike, of course.

Next time I will look at the forecast more carefully ;-).

The spring is here

The spring is here, so we decided to do our every year activity of cleaning the forest from the trash. There was a rain on Saturday morning, nevertheless there was more than 20 kids with their parents coming. I never understand, why people throw their garbage in nature. We gathered 8 full big 50l bags!
In the meantime, experienced woodsmen roasted very good "buffalo" meat (the recipe by E.T. Seton) and we prepared a game for all the kids. They were looking for a treasure of a bandit named Lotrando.

The bandit Lotrando

In the evening I ran my longest run in 2008 so far. I wanted to do 20km, but my legs did not. So I ended up with 17km. So far so good. I took a free Sunday, because my legs were still unhappy with what I did to them day before.

I am free as a bird (full of endorphins after a race)

Here I add a nice picture from the race last week. If you do not have a friend to run with you, take your dog. If you get lost, he will always find his way home. In this case to the finish line.

Weekend plans

Yesterday and today it was extremely warm. Above 20°C. The weather forecast for the weekend is not so optimistic anymore, but still much warmer than in MN. So what can we do for a weekend?
Lenka is sick, so family trip is not an option. But we can go on a bike ride with Vitek. If he wants. And I need to continue with my 1/2 marathon training, so I could try the longest run of this year.

And of course, there is plenty of work to do in our garden after winter.
No boredom at all ...

fatigue

I feel really tired this week.
The spring is coming, which is excellent. It also means I start to travel to my work by bike. Do you know, how is it to sit on a bike after 5 months not biking? It's terrible! First few miles are fine, but it is almost 28km to my work, with 2 steep hills. And I need to ride it back too. My butt, my back, my thighs, all it hurts.
As I want to finish a marathon this year I want to do a half of it first. I subscribed to a 1/2 marathon in the beginning of May and started to increase my running mileage. After 56km on my MTB on Tuesday I ran 15km on Wednesday. My longest run since ... I do not remember.
However, all it means I am tired, tired, tired. Why don't we have a bed at work?

The first one

OK,
it's been a year after my registration here. So may be it is a time to post my first blog?

I like sport in general. During last years I do more running and cycling, tried few running races and short triathlon races. This year my training was poor so far, but still I would like to finish my first marathon and 1/2 ironman. Who knows, may be I will do it.

More later and hopefully not next year ;-)