Today I played water polo for only the second time this century, (my playing experience spanned the mid ’80’s to late 90’s). My buddy Ross, who was both my coach, and later who I also coached with is visiting… and he was invited to drop by and play with a masters team visiting from Calgary, doing a training camp before the US Open. And, as luck would have it, it was happening in a lake just 20 minutes from my house.

I was nervous. I haven’t played in years and have not been swimming either, so the idea that I’d be jumping in a lake and playing players that never really left the game like me was daunting. Water polo isn’t a sport you can easily leave for 20 years and then just start back up again like riding a bicycle.

It was so wonderful to play again, the guys were awesome. I got to get in the pool water with my buddy and play with him for the first time in 30 years. I’ve played in many outdoor pools, but we were at Sasamat Lake, which was warm and picturesque, and the entire experience was great.

That said, I thought I was fit, but this was humbling. For the last two and a half years my workouts have consisted of steady cardio on a bicycle, treadmill, or row machine. To switch to swimming, and add in starts and stops, sprints, and the taxing thinking process of doing something I haven’t done in years had me exhausted in no time at all. I spent a lot of time taking deep breaths and trying to lower my heart rate. It’s a whole different kind of fit to play a game like water polo. It also doesn’t help much that I never was a very efficient swimmer.

I used to have a resting heart rate between 35-40 beats per minute and it could get as low as 32 in the morning before getting out of bed. That was mostly because I trained a lot and my inefficient swim stroke meant that I was usually working harder than anyone else to do the same amount of work.

Add to that, I was never a great player to begin with. I was good, but not great. So a 20+ year gap from playing left me unable to do what I though I could do. On this topic, the Calgary team’s motto on their shirts gave me a good chuckle:

The Older I Get The Better I was

We might join them for one more practice tomorrow, we’ll see how my and my buddy’s bodies feel in the morning.

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