Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Soccer today was good and it's been close to a month since I last kicked a ball? The last time I had a competitive match was the finale match from the soccer module and that was it. The exam period resulted in my bidding goodbye to my weekend soccer and the usual squash at nus. It's been close to half a year since I last played squash and to my astonishment, I noticed mould growing on the racket grip. I need to change the damn grip and wait for my nus friends to finish up with their exams before I can make a quick return to the courts.
The heat of the afternoon sun and lack of match fitness today really affected my play. The heart was willing but the body wasn't and it was shown in my play today. I used to bitch that I was playing way too much soccer this semester due to my soccer module and it was a case of not suffering from a burnout. There was in fact a period of 2 weeks where I had to stop my weekend soccer because I got sick of the game. Burnout is a widely used word by many but many don't really know the actual meaning unless they have experienced it themselves. Squash is one good example where I've suffered countless incidents of burnout thanks to overtraining and putting too much pressure on myself to do well. It gets to a point when you ask yourself what are you doing in the court and you "forget" how to drive the ball etc. It is that bad and you don't enjoy the game anymore. Playing for the sake of doing so and just contended to seeing the game out.
It gets a bit difficult to organize soccer during the holidays because the hall people have gone home and coming back to school (which is located in Boon Lay) isn't really an ideal solution for most of us. For the love of the game, I've travelled across Singapore, even to the East and it won't be fair to the rest to do exactly the same like me. It felt pretty weird today playing at the astro turf in school when there's some conference going on above with all the important guests and all. During the game itself, when the guests came out for their tea break, I've even noticed a few cauasians whipping out their cameras and taking photos of us? If only there were EPL scouts around at NIE today.
This holidays is way to precious to be spent lazing around at home all day. It's time to get out there - swim, run and play soccer and squash. 1 month of studying had rendered me to become the ultimate nerd and it's time for a reversal of roles.
