30, here I come....

Wow. I know there are still five months to go, but I can already see that my 30-year-old body will feel a lot different than my 20-year-old body did.

I played soccer tonight for the first time since college. (Undergrad, that is.) A coworker of Eric's asked if I'd like to play in their night league - women's indoor. Eric bought me new cleats, shin guards and socks. I couldn't commit regularly because of grad school and because my teaching schedule will keep me from the earlier games, but I was able to go tonight. We lost 5-2. It could have been a lot worse, but our team had a stellar goalie.

I discovered a few things tonight:

1) I do not have the stamina I had 8 years ago. Or maybe it just feels that way because I used to play goalie quite a bit so I didn't have to run up and down the field. I didn't think I was going to survive the first half, but as it turned out, I had a little more stamina in the 2nd half than in the 1st.

2) I am still just as good/bad a player as I was 8 years ago. That is, I made several moves I was darn proud of, but a few times I kicked and missed the ball entirely. Given the timespan since my last game, I actually did quite well.

3) Most importantly, I still love the game.

The gal who invited me turns 30 this week, and Eric and I are supplying a volleyball net for her party. I am really looking forward to playing volleyball - no running, and it's only been about 2 years since I last played that one.