The Longest Day

1. My apologies for missing a day in one-blog-post-a-day-week, I'll make it up to you all, I promise.
2. The reason for missing a day in one-blog-post-a-day-week will now become apparent

With regards to the title, I find it's usually best to be wary of using superlatives about every-day situations - there are so many long days yet to come, to be sure particularly as we're nearing the Winter Equinox but I feel that on this day, the exaggeration is necessary, and next time I have an inordinately long day, I'll just make up a new superlative or something.

Today was the University Mixed Indoor Ultimate Regionals in Plymouth. Firstly, a disgustingly long way from  uni-town, secondly, a whole tournament crammed into a mere day, when they are always, always spread over a weekend. Twice the games, twice the injury to be absorbed, twice the support for your other team, in one fast-paced, exhausting, long day.

But what a day we made of it. As is the frisbee way, we all still went to the pub in lack of a party on the Saturday night, but managed to turn up reasonably fresh-faced and sober on Sunday morning. And the chaos began. I don't think we ever had more than a 45 minute gap between our seven seven games, and a gap that long was rare. Never long enough to eat, we either spectated and cheered for the first Fly Hard team, or I read and read the most wonderful book I have had the pleasure to read in some time. More on that later. I honestly couldn't tell you how many of the games we won today, although I'm leaning towards three... This is just one of the reasons I love this sport. It is rarely about the end result, and it is not what I will remember from this experience. On-pitch I'm competitive as a, well, a human, but when all is said and done from this tournament I am taking away my improvement as player, the bonding as a team, the ever-growing passion I have for Ultimate, the pride in how well the freshers on your team performed, despite this being their first tournament, and how good it feels to belt out 'Forget You' at the end of a 3 hour car journey when home is in sight.

I can only hope that everyone has a passion that makes them feel this positive. I have a feeling I've expressed a similar sentiment before, and if I have, I'm glad. The butterflies building up before a game, the freedom of transforming said butterflies into running until you can run no more, throwing, catching and falling a lot of falling, in my case. I can't wait to inspect bruises tomorrow. The proud exhaustion of knowing you played as well as you could have, and more, in each game. Practically indescribable, and so I'll sign off.

Pics to come soon.

Yours, exhausted,
Abby