Sweet, Sweet Hockey ...

My second workout today (though it's technically already the 11th) was some drop-in hockey. As I blogged in my second post, one of my resolutions this year was to play more hockey. It's fun, I love it and it's an amazing workout. If it's a skate where there's not a lot of people and I'm getting a lot of ice time, I can burn around 800 calories a game (thank you bodybugg), so that ain't bad.

Tonight was the first time I've actually skated since sometime in November - I think. I was going to play in December, but I felt nauseous one night I signed up so took my name off the list and another time, there ended up not being a scheduled skate like I was originally led to believe. Basically, it's been a while since I've strapped on my skates.

I got on the ice and stretched like usual, but with a smaller warm-up since the other guys on the ice wanted to get going. I managed to play defense as usual for most of the game and had a few thoughts I'll share here:
- Physically, I remember what I'm supposed to do when I haven't played in a while, but mentally, my game is waaaaay off.
- Still, a couple of the other guys on the bench said I was fine and I had a few bright moments among the bonehead plays.
- Blocked two shots - one off the arm (stung at the time, but couldn't even tell you where it hit now) and one off the leg (i'll be surprised if i don't get a bruise from that one. ow.).
- Had one nifty play in front of the net with the puck in my skates and my stick was tied up - therefore, I got the puck with my skate and sort of drew it behind me with a kick and got it to a teammate - score.
- I actually had a goal, surprisingly enough. Defensive partner passed back to me at our blueline, I skated it up, was going to pass to Rob (one of the regulars), but he cut to my left so I continued to bring it into the zone, down the boards, actually got around the defense and shot it low blocker side ... and it went in! I was below the dots and near the slot when I shot and I guess I forgot to stop or was too close to the goalie since I ended up running the poor guy over and ended up with him half on top of me. Which really, was pretty amusing.

Anyway, I feel exhausted and GREAT. I love the feeling after a good skate and I think this one felt especially good since I've had a hankering to play this week after watching practices for work.

Tomorrow (today?) is planned as an off-day, but I'm not sure if I'll adhere to that. Maybe if I'm up way before Dave, I'll go do a marginal bit of cardio and a crapload of stretching ...