Football vs Marathon

I never felt comfortable with myself on this day of the year. The day where the marathon's in town. Somehow there is a ego thing in myself telling me to go for my second marathon.

In style.

My first marathon wasn't such a pleasant experience. I vowed to make my second one good. Finish it below 5 hours. But maybe because of such a perfect target that turned me away from it.

Marathons also caused too much trauma to the feet, such that football is affected for a while. It took me half a year to shake off the archilles tendon problem from the first marathon.

But I didn't have time to consider all these this morning. There was an important game that would decide whether our team finishes third in the league. We had to win to leapfrog the current third placed team, who also happened to be our opponents today.

The score went like, 1-0, 1-1, 2-1, 2-2, 3-2 in our favour! We ran out winners!

The goals we conceded were soft. I conceded the first by giving away a penalty.

Second goal was a misjudgement by the keeper. Sigh. Moreover there was less than 5 mins left in the game. The opponents were so relieved and exhilarated to get the equalizer. They congratulated one another and even taunted our manager! (So childish).

We were frustrated. We didn't deserve to lose this game. And we definitely didn't deserve to suffer all their taunts and rough tackles.

In the next attacking move that followed, our attacking mid dispossessed their DM, fed the ball to our striker, who rounded the keeper before an emphatic finish with his left foot into an empty goal!

Everyone was like, crazy after that goal! The scorer was running around with both his fists clenched and raised sky high, my defensive partner was doing some obscene celebration with his crotch (which caught me off guard! I never expected him to be... Alright, never judge a book by its cover in future). Everyone else was crazy! Shouting and screaming and running around like mad men. I could only squat and laughed like mad. The image of his erotic celebration was too much for me to bear.

My manager was cursing, swearing, and taunting at the opponents.

Of course, he attracted enough attention to distract the opponents to continue with the game. They game out in full force to form a circle around him.

A good game ended in a fight, and had to be stopped because of it.

But this was a fantastic game nonetheless, due to the following reasons!

1) Something was at stake (third place and trophy and medals),
2) See-saw game. (Led twice and two equalisers)
3) Emphatic winner on our side, right at the dead.
4) Low class opponents.
5) Match ended up in a fight.

After the game no one went off right away like the usual days. Everyone stayed back to talk about it. We even went for a drink after that.

Now come to think of it. Either way I would have a sense of achievement this morning. If I were to run an marathon, the feeling of finishing 42.195km would be an overwhelming experience, but,

games of today's nature can never be as pre-mediated as a marathon. Marathon is just train and run, push your body to your limits, and you'll finish it. Football is, coping with crisis together, and celebrating together when such an emphatic goal came right at the end!

I'm glad to have been at the game today, and honoured to do the write up for our team, for the weekend warrior section of the Newpaper.

Running is lonely. Football is company.