Tuesday 2 September 2008

A vicious attack

Last night I was violently beaten up by Rugby.

Technically, I was the one who elected to try for the girls' varsity rugby team, so it was self-inflicted, but I still felt like a group of hooligans had been at me with bats when I woke up this morning. Big ones. Probably made of metal.

It didn't help that rugby came at the end of a long day involving waking up early to make it to breakfast, a wonderful lecture about traditions at King's*, and a three and a half hour long trek around Halifax disguised as a "scavenger hunt". By the end my legs were ready to fall off, but then... rugby! I sat down on my bed and briefly considered taking a nap instead of going. I seriously weighed the idea in my mind. Then I dragged myself out of bed, pulled on some workout gear, and went to meet the team.

Instantly, I was pretty terrified. I haven't played rugby in two years, and I haven't been doing much physical exercise lately either. There had also been horror stories told to me by my Frosh leaders about fitness runs up Citadel Hill. If you've been to Halifax and seen the Citadel, you're probably cringing right now. Unless you are a runner, in which case I envy your cardio abilities a lot, because by the middle of the rugby practice, I wanted to lay down and die. Actually, the low point came while lying on the ground in the middle of a "jump up off the ground and sprint" drill. I almost puked, provoking a yell of "If you have to puke, puke, but just run!" from the beast coach Ronnie. Yikes. I tried to make up for it by focusing and yelling "LEFT!" and "RIGHT!" really loudly to get the ball. Since the team is so small, they don't do cuts; if you show up to practices, you're on the team, basically. Hopefully.

After rugby, I was seriously considering bedtime, but most of the girls from the team were heading to Retro Night at the campus bar (the Wardroom), so I hurried back, took a shower, donned some retro gear and ran off to a party. Now, for those of you doing the math, this means I'd missed dinner, I was dehydrated, and now I was drinking. This adds up to the killerest hangover of my life, mixed with every muscle aching. I spent a good chunk of today sprawled in various places, trying to work up the will to move my body.

And tomorrow is the next practice! Hurray! So after my first classes tomorrow, I will run to the shops to grab a mouth guard, some socks and a nose stud to replace my ring which I will get out of my nose... somehow. I'm incredibly anxious about tomorrow: starting lecture and tutorial, getting everything ready for rugby, keeping up with frosh events... Things no longer get scheduled for me. Things overlap and I just gotta choose, because no one is going to schedule it for me. It's all on me.




*ok, so maybe it was a propaganda speech about how awesome we are. The thing is, we are. No lies there. None of this scary U of T "FAMOUS PEOPLE STUDIED HERE" business. We are just legitimately awesome. Clearly.

1 comment:

David Scrimshaw said...

It's great, not just great, but inspiring, to see you throwing yourself into the university experience.