Hockey and manual cars

I played hockey on Sunday. For the first in six months I walked onto a hockey field and then hobbled off an hour or so later. My whole body, in particular my legs, aches.

I really enjoy hockey but, as my free time is tight, I generally only play during regular winter season and I don't really train, just turn up and play on weekends. For the last few years I've felt like this after my first couple of games.

On the weekend I played left half. A good position to start as it shouldn't involve too much running and I could coast a bit. After ten minutes everything was going OK, but then I did a short sprint to get in front of my player and intercept a ball. It worked and I passed it off OK, but then my left thigh started telling me it wasn't happy. In fact it was rather upset about this whole sprint thing and it wouldn't be letting me do that again. By half time, after a few more attempts to move with some speed my right leg had joined in the protest and now my left leg was becoming quite insistent.

Since walking off the field at full time (we won - yay!) various muscles in my body have been reminding me just how foolish I am. I accept all this (as I can't do anything about it) and have been walking, sitting, lying and generally moving very gingerly as a result.

Now this morning I took the Saab back to the garage to have a few things fixed up (I won't bore you further with the details, something about a new flux capacitor or something). I was given a loan car for the day.

"Are you OK with a manual?" I was asked.

"Yeah, no worries".

A manual car poses no real problem in theory. While I drive an automatic I am fine with manual cars as well. But once I got in I realised my left leg was now going to have to press the clutch to the floor - not once but many times on the way to work - and it wasn't all that keen.

I now ache some more. Curse manual cars!