This past weekend San Diego Squash hosted a Squash tournament.

The Men’s 3.5 was divided into two groups: a group of three and a group of four.  I happened to be in the group of four that needed to play three Best-of-Five matches (two on Sat, one on Sun) with a potential fourth match depending on how well I do against the opponents.  Fortunately I did pretty well and won against all three opponents.  It should be noted that two of the opponents were junior’s.  Their games were pretty straight forward and was easy to either overpower or deceive to win the match.

Unfortunately though, the game on Sun started at 11:15am and ended around 11:40am.  And the Final game started at 12:30pm.

Going into the finals, there would be a number of different factors that would undoubtedly affect my performance…

• I was already tired from the 1st game and having less than 1 hour to recover was not enough time.  I drank some chocolate milk for quicker recovery but that milk didn’t seem to do much.
• I tried to stay loose by continuing massaging my leg muscles.  But the right leg effectively cramped up during the match limiting my mobility.
• I was also sick and/or recovering from some weird flu I got earlier in the week.  I didn’t get the full blown flu symptoms but I got like 20% of the symptoms… a little cough, a little runny nose, a little fever, etc…  Warming on Sat, I was out of breath just hitting.  So I knew my fitness would be impaired.  The lack of fitness is what probably did me in.

In the finals, I figured, I can probably go full speed for about 4 games.  I had to take and put pressure on the opponent before my fitness broke down.  Sadly, I couldn’t last long enough to finish the game.  If I didn’t have to play that first game on Sun, I think I probably might have won.  I would at least not have been tired to start with.

Overall, I think I did pretty well.  I was a bit disappointed that I got sick which affected my fitness.  My mobility was fine until the finals which I attribute to fatigue.  My service game was pretty good.  My drop game suffered in the finals as well probably also to fatigue.  I know I made some bad decisions in the finals.  The fatigue affected my form.  I think I was over-hitting and over-exerting on my swing.  My right upper arm muscle (deltoids?) are extremely tight and sore since Sat night.  I usually experience this when I try to force a swing in order to smash the ball.

I have to figure out some way to quickly recover in the future.  I guess not all chocolate milks are equal.  I should have spent the time to go to Whole Foods to buy the Metro Cocoa Milk instead of the Horizon Chocolate Milk that I bought at Starbucks that morning.