Texas paintball and back

Obviously I'm a sucker for punishment and as usual I find more ways to punish myself. This past weekend two friends and I jumped in the car and drove to Texas to play paintball.

Paintball? Yes.

I haven't played in years and just recently have gotten back in the sport. The game in Texas was a 24 hour scenario game with hundreds of players on each team. Back in the day I was on a team that won the European championship two years in a row and some local competitions but I just outgrew the cliques and drama that seemed to follow most good teams.

I'm used to running around and stressing my body but I haven't worn cleats in years. I forgot how much traction you get and how much your body has to adjust to the quick turns, rapid stops, etc. On top of that there was all the usual running, sprinting, low crawling (the night game was great, had to crawl almost 1/2 a mile to wreck an enemy squad), etc.
I gave lessons to people on squad element maneuvers, hasty ambushes, planned ambushes, fire and maneuver, and more. It's all natural to me but in order to be successful the people around you need to know what they are doing (and what you are doing). We were able to hold all the objectives, hold the lines, repel assaults, etc.
We won by several hundred points to the amazement of the other two teams. Our team commander told me that she appreciated my dedication and the quick training lessons given out to the squads before they headed out on missions. I also played a medic for a few hours and had 112 revives under enemy fire, talk about MVP status (had we stayed for the award ceremony anyhow).

One of my friends has only left Colorado to go to San Fran last year when we had a business meeting. Now he has been to a couple more states and wasn't really impressed with New Mexico and only slightly impressed with Texas. I think Texas has the interstate system down really well, we never had traffic issues and everyone was friendly and tried not to impede traffic if they were slow. We based outside of Austin so everything was really green and the weather cooperated nicely and was in the 50's.

One of my friends cleaning his gear after the night game.

My body is almost recovered. I'll give it a few more days before I run and do lower body workouts. As we all know, the older we get the harder and longer the recovery is.

We all had an amazing time, we are debating going next month to Dallas. It was nice to just go have fun for a few days and not care about much else.