Winter is coming

Here we are. The northerly gales are back. That sounds pretty awful in Ultimate terms.

In Northern Europe and in most of North America people play indoor during the winter because it is just too cold to play outdoor. In the UK, on the other hand, it gets cold, windy, and wet to the point of making playing outdoor painful, but possible. You just have to be prepared and accept mud as a legitimate playing surface. Winter Ultimate is less painful and more possible using the right thermal clothing, waterproff gear, and footwear.

Thermal clothing

Someone once told me: "There is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing". Here are my suggestions:

First of all, forget cotton! Cotton clothes are useful for doing sport only for 15 minutes. After that, they will get soaked with sweat and rain. Dump clothing will make you very cold, very quickly. It’s just physics: water conducts heat much better (25-30 better) than air, so dump clothes absorb heat from your body very quickly rather than insulating it from the cold.

What you want is some kind of clothing that stays dry in contact with the skin (you may have heard this already in some tampon commercial) so that the air trapped inside the garment acts as an insulating layer.

Solution: Wear technical clothes. They come in a variety of brand names, such as “dri-fit”, “coolmax”, etc. These garments hare usually made 100% of polyester. The stretchy ones usually are made of “lycra”, “spandex”, or some other elastic material.They are great for 2 reasons. First, they hardly absorb any water, they come out of the washing machine already nearly dry. Second, they are usually made of wicking material that draws water from the inside to the outside of the garment, hence: Never wear them inside-out.

I can recommend:

- Lite Sports top and leggings. They are very stretchy and they cost less than Nike and other brand names.

- EDZ under-layer. All products are on their website. When it’s really cold, I use the base layer top, leggings, neck warmer, and hat. They can all be bought at these online shops:

- http://www.thermalshop.co.uk/

- http://www.mandp.co.uk/

- Decathlon has its own range of thermal wear, which is of decent value. You can have alook at their website.

I have worn this stuff last year and I was always toasty warm, regardless of weather. Some people, incomprehensibly, dress only to the point where they can bear the cold, rather than to the point where they are comfortable. I am definitely in the second group.

Your body burns calories just to maintain its core temperature. If you don’t dress well, your body will be burning a large amount of calories just to keep warm. I’d rather use those calories to play D.

It's better to wear this type of underlayers skin tight. Often it is better to buy them one size smaller than you usually wear.

Water-proof gear

The main thing that characterises winter Ultimate in London is rain. There is no way out. You will play under the rain at some point.

- Bin liners. The easiest way to keep dry bags, shoes, food etc. on the sideline is to put everything inside bin liners. You can buy bin liners at any supermarket. The only problem is that, when the entire team does this, the sideline becomes full of indistinguishable black bags and it will be impossible to find your own.

- Waterproof jacket and (over-)trousers (pants for the Americans). It is a good idea to keep dry and warm between games, and sometime between points. This is easily done with water proof jacket and trousers. I have bought mine for around £10 each; both packable.

- Waterproof poncho. An alternative to jacket and trousers. You can put it on and take it off easily and when you are not wearing it you can use it as a blanket to cover bags and other gear.

- Rucksac liner: Keeps your rucksac dry.

Any half-decent outdoor shop should sell all the above. I have bought most of my stuff from Mountain Warehouse in Covent Garden. They have also a website.

Stretching

There is always quite a bit of discussion about stretching among Ultimate players, who are often also fitness geeks. Should you bounce or hold the stretch? How many repetitions? Should you breathe normally or exhale as you stretch? What’s the difference between a warm up stretch and a warm down stretch?

Here is a decent resource on stretching: http://people.bath.ac.uk/masrjb/Stretch/stretching_toc.html

Worlds in Perth

This week the World Ultimate Club Championship took place in Perth Australia.

Results and final standings on the tournament website: http://www.wucc2006.org/

Some considerations from someone who did not go and followed on and off what what going on from a distance:

Initially the general feeling was that this was not going to be a tournament that represents the best of ultimate around the world. For most teams in North America and Europe it’s very expensive to get to Australia and mid-November is not the ideal time of the year to take 1-2 weeks off work or University. Many Americans have already used up all their holidays for UPA sectionals nationals.

The result is that the tournament would have represented who could afford to go rather than the best teams throughout the world.

On the other hand, it gave the chance to Asian and Australian teams to show their worth. They normally have the same cost problems in coming to Europe and North America.

I have the feeling that the average level was probable lower than at other WUCCs, but at the top end of each division there were some really strong teams.

Buzz Bullet, in particular, have spanked pretty much everyone, showing that in Japan they really know what they are doing.

Apparently the Spirit was bad, especially by European standards. I have seen an email on itadisc by Davide Morri (aka Il Migliore), one of Italy’s strongest players, complaining that the amount of fouls and dodgy calls was simply insane. He was playing with Ultimate Vibration, a team from Paris that is infamous around Europe exactly for poor spirit.

One last thing. It was really difficult to follow what was going on. The tournament website was rubbish: no clips, no blogs, no match reports. The results of individual games were made available via www.scoreomatic.com, the least usable website ever.

Some stories from British teams here:
- DiFranco's Blog
- LTD Release Blog