That said, certain pieces of advice have stuck in my head more than others and over time I’ve been able to experience the relevance of those gems and also come to appreciate how accurate and important certain advice can be.

In this post I want to share some of the most prominent advice I have received. It’s not necessarily revolutionary or some sort of hidden advantage. Like most good advice, it’s common sense but the trick is in adopting it and making sure you use it.

So here it is: When you have the disc in your hand you control the outcome of the point.

I don’t think these are the exact words as they were told to me but the idea is there. In a broader sense the point is that there is no better time to make decisions with a cool head than when the disc is in your hands. It’s up to you to take the best option in order for your team to score the point.

Often this may go against your instincts. Just two days ago I attempted to huck a backhand well before the stall-count had even started. The cut was great and there was a player to throw to but alas my skill and patience were not up to scratch. Perhaps if I had taken a second to settle myself the throw would have hit the target. Even more likely is that I would have re-assessed and waited for a cut that better suited my throwing capabilities. This could well have been a dump-cut.

Thinking about this in a broader sense recently I realized that this particular piece of information is part of the fundamental balance of the game of Ultimate Frisbee. There are lots of factors that contribute to the “fairness” of every sport. If it was overly unfair between offense and defense then no-one would play, or rules would be adjusted to remove the swing.

In Ultimate Frisbee a large swing in favor of the fairness for offense is the fact that they have the disc in their possession. This is a huge advantage! A team with a reasonable skill level of throwing and catching could potentially dominate a higher skilled team providing they kept their heads cool and focused. I have seen the success of teams be very hampered by their desire to play with a flourish, rather than in a focused, team oriented frame of mind.

Don’t get me wrong, I love risky throws and huge catches. They make the game all the better and fun to play. The point is that these opportunities will still occur due to other factors, you don’t have to create them.

So after all that here is my spin, my advice. Next time you have the disc in your hand and you are staring up the field looking for an option, try and remember that the outcome of the point you’re playing depends on what you do next. You’ve got your 10 seconds, you should have a dump cut just waiting behind you. Make your move.

On top of that, approach any offensive point in a positive way. Your team has been handed the advantage and it’s up to you to make it work in your favour.

Today I went to the physic who told me I wasn’t allowed to ride my bike for two weeks. This came about as I have some fairly intense pain around my left knee and calf muscle. In short, some instability around my hips and riding with my seat too low has allowed my knee to be unstable whilst riding. This has stretched the patellar tendon and my calf muscle has been overworked to compensate.

$120 later I’m equipped with some daily strengthening excercises (which I will do!) and a no-ride policy for 2 weeks. Given I ride to work every day this is going to be inconvenient. In fact, I now needed a way to get home!

I had a number of options:

• Ride home anyway – one last time before starting my two week break
• Catch a bus home
• Stay around at work late until Maz rides home and then comes back to get me
• Run home

Given I’m not riding for two weeks I needed to find an option that would suit me tonight and for the next 10 working days. I decided that, having never run with a backpack, I would give it a try. I was planning on running at lunch time today anyhow so all my running gear was on-hand.

Well it was horrible. Despite the tightness of the straps my bag still bounced around all over the place. It was moving so much that my iPhone, which never skips, was skipping! After giving up on music I continued running but ended up having to hold my backpack to stop it from moving. Running without my hands looks and feels ridiculous and is hardly any fun. My top was riding way up my back due to the friction of the backpack as well.

I did track the run and you can see it by clicking here to check out the Runkeeper log.

As you can see, it was rather slow and I walked in many places as I was too fed up with the bouncy bag., It’s just over 3k to get home so really I should be able to do it comfortably under 15 minutes (which isn’t that much longer than riding really!).

So now I don’t know what to do. I think I might try minimizing the need for a backpack. I use it to carry food and clothes primarily (given I normally wear riding gear). If I bring a bunch of food to work in one go along with a bunch of clothes I should be right for a week potentially? Not sure yet…

I should be able to carry the essentials (phone, wallet, security card and a house key) in my SPIbelt.

I miss my bike already…

The team I play for is called “Bread” and its made up of a great group of people who have played together in a number of leagues and, maybe most importantly, all have a similar attitude to Ultimate.

Throughout the TUC league Bread had mixed success. As with many Tasmanian leagues we suffered various absences as key players were unavailable for games. This occurred due to illness or overseas travel. Two of our players were off representing Austrlia in Germany for a number of weeks.

As a result we had to fight for a place in the finals. Being a 4 team league (Tasmanian Ultimate is by no means a large community, especially at a “premier” level”) we essentially had to work our way from the bottom of the ladder to the top. This involved beating every team possible in consecutive games over the course of a few weeks.

Last week we played for the right to play in the grand final. This was a very challenging game and our entire team was nervous throughout the proceedings. HUC (Hobart Ultimate Club) are known for their relentless accuracy and also a sweet dosage of speed that serves them very well.

Despite our concerns we managed to come away with a win. In my opinion this was the best game of Ultimate our team has played in a long time. We had most of our players avialable and everyone stepped up playing with a precision and level headedness that was most impressive.

On a personal level I was extremely pleased with my performance. My throws, difficult and easy, came off well and I managed to pull of some great catches as well. I felt very valuable on the team and haven’t felt happier after an Ultimate game for a long time.

Which brings me to the subject of this post. Sorry its taken a while to get there but as I haven’t written anything for a good while I thought I’d better provide some background information.

As mentioned, last night we won the grand final however I came away from that game feeling the exact opposite how I felt after our semi-final. Sure, I was very happy to have won and so pleased that we had pulled through as a team. The score was 9-8 and we scored the last point after the final siren.

Despite the victory I played rather badly. Realisitically speaking I reckon I dropped 70% of the throws that came my way. This included easy swings to me across the field, throws directly at me from a cut out of the stack and also flying one handed grabs for hammers deep in the end-zone corner.

During half time I had to take a moment away from the rest of the players to try and contain my frustrations. Things didn’t really improve in the second half and I started feeling like I’d be better off staying on the sidelines than being on the field.

After the game I commented on my dissatisfaction to several people and they tried to cheer me up. I also tried to cheer myself up and together we all came up with a number of excuses:

• The conditions were bad (It was very windy)
• You’d been sick for a week and were still recovering
• The throws weren’t ideal
• Your marker was playing harder than normal

None of these really fit however and truth be told I’m still not really sure what the answer is. Probably a combination of all of the above and other factors I haven’t even thought of. Despite all those things, the fact I kept focusing on was that the disc was in my hands several times, very catchable. In many of the opportunities I wasn’t even under pressure.

In typical Gen Y fashion I pointed my need for a pep talk towards a popular social networking site. Other team members had posted their happiness with our success and in an embarassingly needy fashion I complained again about my performance and how I was upsest with what had occurred.

Our captain, Steve, replied and basically said that he’d thought I played well. He pointed out several throws that, in the difficult conditions, had come off really well and been important to several of our points.

After reading his comments I felt much better and as I continue to think about them the feeling of annoyance at myself is decreasing. In my haste to focus on my catching (which was undeniably sub-par) I had forgotten about the other valuable aspects I had provided to the game.

Personally I think that happens a lot in Ultimate. I’m not a particularly needy person and I’m quite happy to tell myself I’m doing a good job most of the time but its evident that at times I need to get someone else’s positive perspective to keep me going.

From this entire experience I have concluded a couple of things:

• A good captain is encouraing and focuses on the positives as much as the negatives
• A good player focuses on their positives as well as their negatives
• A good player focuses on other people’s positives. Whether you’re on the same team or not a compliment can go a long way.

It’s easy to applaud the big things in Ultimate. The run-on hand blocks, the desperate sprinting cuts into the end-zone. Layouts in both defensive and offensive situations.

However, the solid offense, the willingness to keep running and keep trying are often overlooked. Personally I think that keeping your offensive player (when you are on defense) under careful control is one of the most overlooked skills and abilities in the game.

Lets start applauding our defensive players who keep on top of their offensive counterparts. If a cut isn’t successful its not just because the offensive person failed to cut well, its also because the defensive player knew what they were doing and moved in the right way at the right time.

Lets also start focusing on the positives of our plays. You can lose points and lose games whilst still doing great positive things in your points.

I don’t have long (falling asleep!) but suffice is to say that we’re still alive and having lots of fun.  Our time in England is drawing to a close which is somewhat sad.  I’m looking forward to having some time off work on the way home and sleeping in our bed again but aside from that I’d be happy to stay over here for significantly longer!  Brighton has been great.

Anyhow – since last post we’ve been to visit Maz’s Uncle an Aunt up in Sheffield.  I quite liked Sheffield and we spent a good long weekend there.  The train ride was nowhere near as bad as we were expecting and actually went quite swiftly.

Last weekend some different relatives came to Brighton for the weekend so we got to stay at home which was a nice change.  We checked out some Brighton sights including the famous Pavilion and a bit of a boat cruise.  We also had diner at a Jamie Oliver Italian Restaurant which was decent.

Aside from all that I’ve managed to get a bit of shopping in and am somewhat concerned about my baggage allowance as a result.  Tonight I went on my first ever rollercoaster (I don’t like rides) on the Brighton Pier which was actually not too bad   Maz and I sat between some sizable Germans for protection. (Hi Marius!).

We have another week in Brighton and then 2 days more of work before we’re on leave for 1.5 weeks.  We’ll spend a couple of days here, a few days in London (house sitting for Maz’s cousin in the middle of the city…aw yeah!) before heading to Malaysia for a few days.  Last night we booked 3 nights at a tropical resort in Penang along with a single night’s accommodation in Kuala Lumpur.  I forgot to bring my boardies so it looks like I have a bit more shopping to do

Anyhow – work has been especially exhausting lately so I need some sleep.  Apologies for the lack of pictures…  I feel pretty bad about that actually…

I haven’t listened to the mixes yet but they look interesting!

There were also quite a few about twitter and random followers.  However, the funniest by far:

meerkats playing badminton

Ha!

We got up nice and early (that’s 7am for us) on Saturday and headed to the train station for a 1 hour ride into the city.  Once we arrived we navigated The Underground no troubles to arrive at the stop nearest our hotel.   Stepping out onto the street we were greeted with this:

I didn’t realise at the time but the variety of modern buildings scattered about ancient masterpieces turned out to be one of the things I liked most about London.  Using the underground to pop up around various places with London you’re constantly treated with a mix of modern and historic architecture.  It results in a fairly unique feel for an Australian, a relatively young country in comparison!

Once we’d dropped our bags off at the hotel we popped back down to The Underground, heading for Leicester Square in an attempt to locate some nice cheap theatre tickets for the evening.  We seemed to be able to navigate The Underground without many problems but what struck me was the craziness of the stairs, tunnels, escalators and ramps that you walk around when changing lines and locating your train platforms. Here’s a bad example, but I like the photo anyhow:

Here’s a photo of Maz in da Undeground:

Once we made it to Leicester Square we were presented with a ridiculous amount of outlets promising cheap theatre tickets but on Maz’s dad’s advice we headed for the centre of the square where the official cheap ticket booth was located.  We’d previously decided that the musical we both wanted to see the most was Wicked however there were no tickets available!  We looked at what was on offer, decided upon Peter Pan and joined the silly long queue:

Whilst we were in line an elderly gentleman wandered past claiming that he had tickets for sale for a few different musical, including Wicked!  Given how much we wanted to see it we foolishly made a snap decision, asked him where the seats were, and purchased some tickets.  After we had handed over the money we quickly checked the theatre map to figure out where we had to go, and then walked off.

After about 5 minutes we both realised that we may have just made a huge mistake.  We didn’t ask the guy any details about where he got the tickets from, or for any details at all really!  We spent the rest of the day wondering if we were even going to get into the theatre!

After that we took a wander to Trafalgar Square.  Last time we visited there was some restoration and construction work going on but this time everything was looking good!  Amazingly popular with the tourists too.  No surprise but there were people everywhere!

From Trafalgar Square we jumped back on The Underground and headed out to Camden Markets.  This was a recommendation from someone we met at Frisbee and it didn’t disappoint.  Crazily busy but really good shopping.  Bit of a hippy vibe but if you ever need a tattoo or a piercing there were plenty of places on offer here!  The shops were pretty decent from the outside as well.  We didn’t get to see all of it but spent a few hours here, got some dodgy KFC for lunch and then headed back into London central.

For some reason The Underground was going a bit nuts in the afternoon.  It was getting really hot and was fairly icky to be honest! Crowded much:

We spent the afternoon on Oxford Street where I spent way too much money and Maz didn’t find anything to buy   That evening we made our way to the Theatre a bit early in an attempt to get there early and avoid the crowds.  We sat down at a restaurant for dinner, realised we didn’t have time, got Subway and headed off to the Theatre.  Once we arrived at where the Theatre was supposed to be we realised that something wasn’t right.  A quick look at our tickets and a check on the ol iPhone and we realised we were in completely the wrong place and the actual theatre was across town!

After a couple of horrifying seconds we got our heads together, found where we needed to go, jumped on a train then into a taxi and made it there in time after 20 minutes of stress!  Luckily we’d gone nice and early in the first place!  We managed to get into the Theatre fine and as expected, the show was excellent

The next day we decided to check out Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre as it was nice and close to our hotel.  Was a decent tour and an interesting place (even though its not the real one).  It was hard to take good photos in there!

After the tour we wandered back into town via the Millennium Bridge (from Harry Potter omg!).   For some reason there were loads of jets flying around:

After that we scooted back into town for some more shopping before heading back to Brighton.  The train ride went really really quickly as seemingly I fell asleep!  As the weather was so awesome that evening we decided to go for a wander around the Marina.  It was quite a trek but it was really mild and sweet to be outside in the evening without being completely frozen!  Going to be tough to go home after living here for a while:

Next weekend – Sheffield!

On the Friday night after a long boring train ride we went out for a few drinks then to the most amazing purple Indian restaurant I’ve ever seen.  Everything was purple including the custom made carpet and pointy shoes of the guy on the door.  We ended up eating at about 10pm before heading out to see the residence of Stu and Shani.

The next day we went to Portsmouth to visit some famous ships.  We went on a couple and also saw the hull of a ship that was dredged up from the bottom of the sea a number of years ago.  First we went onto, and inside the Warrior:

Portsmouth Harbour

Steering Wheels

Anchor Chain

There were about 30 of these, all for running the engine.

We visited another ship and a museum before heading to the pub for some drinks and then out for Italian.  The next day we decided to go for a jaunt in the forest with the intention of riding some bikes around.  We got stuck in traffic for about an hour and then found out that the bikes were stupidly expensive so we headed off to the pub for lunch.

Some horses laying around in the forest…

Maz and Shani Feeding Horses…

Yorkshire pudding…aww yeah…

Now we’re back at work and tonight we decided to cook a joint dinner and declare it Pimms’o'clock!  Time to eat!

Jess preparing the Pimms…

I was reminded of Hobart Ultimate about 2 years ago whereby there was a huge amount of beginners and inexperience coupled with some really good intense players that liked to huck between themselves.    Maz was assigned to one of the four teams and Col and I to another. We all won the games we played in, which means our team is playing Maz’s team in the finals next week!  Regular frisbee bbq to follow – should be sweet.

Last night (Wednesday) we had a work dinner.  We have a lot of staff in the UK who work remotely from the office but this week they are all in Brighton for training.  We went out for Thai and it was really yummy   Tonight we were going to play virtual golf but it fell through as the place shut at 9pm.

Tomorrow we’re heading off to Southampton for the weekend to spend some time with Stu and Shani, friends I met in NZ.  The train tickets were pretty expensive at $80 but we made up for it with return tickets to London for the weekend after for $24!  Super cheap!

We’re now trying to figure out the best way to get to Sheffield on the long weekend to see some of Maz’s family. The train tickets are quite expensive and its cheaper to hire a car… but its a 4 hour drive!  Not sure what to do ..

Anyhow – should be some new pics in place after our weekend in Southampton.

On our way home we attempted to pick up some beers to sample with our dinner but unfortunately we couldn’t find any that were cold to buy!  Whilst they sell alcohol in the supermarket, its just on the shelf not in the fridge!  We couldn’t find a bottle-o around here either so we ended up lining some brews in the fridge to try the next day!

On Saturday (today) we ventured out of Brighton for about an hour on the train.  Our destination was the village of Arundel which has an awesome castle!  Unfortunately we weren’t allowed to take any photos inside but we got plenty of snaps outside.  It was sweet to wander around the village/town and it was once again beautiful weather.

Tomorrow we’re planning on spending the day in Brighton.  Our next few weekends are already booked up so it will be good to just spend some time in the city we’re living in.  We have a few memorable shops that we visited last time we were here that we’re keen to visit again so overall it should be a fairly relaxing day.

Anyhow – I’ve uploaded some photos to facebook of what we’ve been up to so far.  You can see the album here:

Facebook Brighton Album

These photos will all make it onto Picasa at some stage but for now this was the easiest way to share them!