Flat Out, Naked.

Actually, Flat Out, Nude (N.U.D.E is the Nelson Ultimate Frisbee club.) They run an annual tournament on Tahuna Beach, which I went to with Repton this weekend.

The short summary:
Saturday - rather soggy, and we staggered back to the motel feeling very staunch. The organisers skipped lunch and one of the rest breaks in order to get people out of the rain as soon as possible, so we played straight through from 9am to 2pm with 10 minute breaks in between each game. I had a lot of fun despite the wet, although I had a Lot of trouble running on the sand and didn't get my hands on the disc very often. There was a pirate party in the evening, which I thought about going to, but decided against because I didn't much feel like being rained on again. In our short dash to a closer restaurant, I did discover that the pirate coat Cat made for me several years ago has quite reasonable waterproofing properties (I'd left my regular coat at the beach by accident.) Our team ended the day fourth out of ten teams.

Sunday - rather nice weather, apparently all the other tournaments in this series have been just as lovely. Had a lot more fun in the warmer weather, and my playing Did Not Suck. Sometimes it was even Anti-Sucky and I did cool things like catching a really long throw and participating in really smooth throwing sequences. No layouts, but I'm finding the idea less daunting after a full on collision with a girl who was going for the disc at the same time as I was. I think she had only a marginal chance of catching it, but was OK for her to call it a foul because I felt guilty about knocking her to the ground. Repton of course played beautifully throughout. We ended the round robin fourth out of ten teams, which meant we had to play two more games, unlike the single placement games for the lazy bums (;-)) who were lower than us in the rankings. The Semis were a lot of fun and hard out, and our final game was scarily close and also very hard out. We ended, as you might have guessed, fourth. (There's something about that number...)

Sunday evening - Trip home sucked - our plane was delayed, and Repton and I spent close on an hour and a half cooling our heels in the airport before the airline staff cracked and shifted us to a different plane. Glad to be back, although my cat has been spending the weekend bonding with my flatmate and doesn't seem to think of me as the centre of her world anymore. (Sigh.) I'm rather stiff, but not as badly as expected and my ankle, which has been giving me problems lately, is a lot less sore than I was worried about, mostly due to mammoth taping efforts on Repton's part. Also, I found the tournament as a whole to be a lot less exhausting than the other ones I've been to, so I guess I must have gained some fitness over the last nine months or so since the last time I played in one.