Underwater Hockey

I don’t need much motivation to go for a run and I only need to make plans for a bike ride with a friend to get excited about spending some time riding around Boulder. It is, however, difficult to get excited about going for a swim. You can’t listen to music with your ears under a swimming cap and you can’t catch up with a friend while your face is in the water most of the time. Plus, I still feel clumsy, uncoordinated, and totally out of shape after about 150 yards (even though I’ve gotten “up to” 800 yards during one workout). Suffice to say, I need all the help I can get when it comes to getting motivated to spend time in the pool.

Early this week my friend Maria Elena Price invited me to come up to Ft. Collins for a few laps, a sandwich and some underwater hockey. For those of you who’ve never heard of underwater hockey, which is almost everyone, this is actually happens.

Players wear a snorkel equipment, a glove to protect your stick hand from other sticks and the puck (which weighs about 3 pounds), and flippers. We had four players on each of our teams but you can play 6 players at once. There are a number of different kinds of penalties of which I still don’t understand but the general objectives are the same as soccer or hockey. Put the puck in the goal of the other team.

I’m inexperienced at going without air for long periods of time, chasing puck around the bottom of a pool, and being kicked in the face with flippers before needing to force the water out of a snorkel tube before I can inhale. This is a pretty difficult combination of things to get ahold of.

I finally gave up on the snorkel gear and resorted to using the lap swimming goggles I am used to. This had advantages and disadvantages. I just needed to pick my head up quickly to get a fresh breath of air, which was much easier than dealing with some crazy head gear. On the other hand, the other players can move so quickly that I couldn’t keep my eye on the play with my head out of the water. Often times, after a quick breathe, I would put my head back down to find the play had changed completely, or I would see 7 other pairs of arms, legs and flippers splash wildly off in a different direction and I would be alone in my little corner of the pool before I knew it.

All in all, I had a great time, though I don’t think it did a lot to help my freestyle technique so I think I’m going to have to stick primarily to laps for now.