You know how, when you start exercising for the first time, you should start slow? You gotta build up strength and endurance? How you can’t just run a marathon the first time out? I don’t know what I was thinking…

I played beach volleyball yesterday for the first time in almost three years. True, I have been playing volleyball occasionally at work. But not on the beach. Not hard-hitting two-on-two. Not in the merciless Spanish summer sun. Not for four hours straight!!!

I remember a point, about three hours into it, where my body just wouldn’t do what my mind was asking it to do. It couldn’t. And then soon after, my mind stopped working altogether. I was swinging into the bottom of the net and sending serves clear down the beach. I felt like a rag doll. But that was mostly on the inside. I kept up a strong enough front to go 7-3 and be crowned King of the Beach at the end of the day. It was fantastic.

I somehow made it home on the fumes of the adrenaline that I had been burning and, after a quick shower, dinner, and putting Emily to bed, I lied down on the floor in the living room. And then it all gets blurry. I remember telling Jan that I was going to go to bed early, totally in denial of the complete and utter exhaustion that had consumed me. I think I woke up about an hour later, still on the floor, and saw Jan turning on the TV above me. I couldn’t speak. And then I passed out again. I woke up a couple of hours later to see Jan turning off the TV (after having watched three episodes of Scrubs, none of which do I remember) and going to bed. I tried to get up and go to bed but my body was apparently on strike. So I gave up and went back to sleep on the floor. I think I woke up at around 3am and dragged my sorry butt to bed.

All in all, I had a great time. It was so nice to be back on the beach where I had spent so much of the first half of my Barcelona life. I even bumped into three different friends whom I hadn’t seen in three years! I wish I could get down there more often, but my weekends are mostly Emily-laden these days. So, if anyone would like to come down to the beach and make sand castles with Emily for a few hours on the weekend, please let me know!!!