Pain train

I have talked about the presumably SI joint related lower back pain that has been my constant companion for months.  Despite the pain I have been able to stay functional, including weekly pickleball sessions, normally Fridays at lunch.  Because of some conflicts we wound up playing yesterday at lunch.  Most of the games were singles which I prefer, despite being more demanding physically. I won more games than I lost which is always a good thing.

So I only play once a week because I don’t think my body can take much more.  There are a lot of short bursts of speed, direction reversal and other movements that just don’t cooperate with my aging joints.  Well on the way home I got a text from another guy I know from the gym asking me if I wanted to play at the new park by me.  The opportunity to play so close to home sounded good to me so I said yes, despite just playing at lunch.

As I drove home it became clear that playing there would be a no go as a storm was drenching the area however JD told me they were going to play at Veterans Park instead where it was not raining. He encouraged me to still play.  Playing suddenly became much less convenient but I had been wanting to get together with Jeff for a little while so I told him I would be there.  I had played at Veterans a couple times before, it is pretty busy and has a lot of higher level players mixed in.  I got home, took care of Elsa, Kathy and the normal Thursday night chores before heading back out.

When I showed up Jeff was playing a doubles match with his wife, another county IT guy I know and a fourth person they picked up.  They had me swap in immediately.  I played with JD’s wife who had only played a couple times.  Despite this we actually managed to come back and win our game after being down pretty big.  I was jamming them up with my serve for a bit to score some quick points.  We played a number of games and I played a singles match against Jeff as well which was fun.  He has only played 6 or 7 times but you can tell he has the skills to do well as he has played a lot of racquetball and moves well.  They had to get going but I stuck around some more, despite knowing I was already past the stage of pushing my luck physically.

I wound up playing another singles match and then pairing up with the guy to play two doubles matches against two different teams with players that were much higher skilled.  We felt proud to have scored 5 points against one of them.  I was beat up.  All of the time on the court definitely had left my knees sore.  I was sweating my ass off and according to my Apple Watch I again touched 170BPM during some of the play.  I knew I overdid it.  Oh did I mention, I am also supposed to play TODAY at lunch?  That will be powered completely by Advil and my dual knee braces.

My Labor Day weekend is looking to be pretty busy.  Tonight I plan to get the weeding done after work to clear out my time tomorrow.  I am hosting the fantasy football draft for our league once again but for the first time ever it is not at night.  Instead it is scheduled to fire off at 3PM.  I will barely have enough time to clean up until my live stream starts at 8:30 PM.  Tomorrow will be a long and busy day for sure.

On Sunday I am running into the office to get something done and then head home.  Depending on the standing water situation at the house over the weekend I will be trying to slot in a mowing session as well.  I better get some wheel time in as well along the way since we are off Monday for Labor Day.