Overheating

So at the beginning of this tennis shindig, I had a vague wondering about when my age would start to become a factor in my tennis matches. A lot of the singles players are probably still in the early 20s, and some younger than that. And while I don't yet FEEL older than early 20s, I'm absolutely in my mid 30s. And many of the other singles players are not.

So Thursday, I played two matches. Both were pretty easy, and I won them pretty quickly, but I was still on the court for at least 3 hours that day, with heat at or above 100F.

On Friday morning, I played a 9:30 match against the other team's best singles player. We started the match out probably in about 85 degree heat, and I knocked out the first set pretty quickly. The second set, however, was long and painful with some crazy intense points. I was icing between games (wiping ice everywhere I could), dumping ice water over my head, back, and shoulders, and drinking water and Gatorade the whole time. The temperature was over 100 by the second set, and you could FEEL the sun.

Towards the end of the second set, I was so focused on winning the match that I think I must've not been cooling as much as I should have. The last game took probably 20 minutes, and she staved off probably 10 match points before I finally closed out the match. It was a great win, but I paid the price for it.

As I was gathering my rackets and water after we finished (the match lasted over 2.5 hours), I noticed that my hands and legs were shaking really hard, and I was having a hard time making them do what they needed to do. That has never happened to me before, and I started to wonder if maybe I wasn't hotter than I realized. After I reported my score and sat down with my team to watch another match, I started to feel really really bad. I felt like I was going to pass out and throw up at the same time - not a good feeling. I had a friend walk with me to air conditioning, where I sat coating myself in ice for about 15 minutes. That helped marginally, but I still very bad. Eventually I wandered over the medic tent to have my vitals taken and make sure everything was ok (it was). An hour or so later, I finally felt normal, but the whole experience was really frightening and humbling.

The scariest part about it was the fact that I didn't even feel it coming on. I tend to check in with my systems (heart rate, breathing patterns, muscle cramps, etc.) when I'm on the court in hot weather, and I think I was doing that on Friday. I was well hydrated (even when I felt the worst), fine on nutrition, never had a single muscle cramp, and was doing everything right. I've played in the hot summer heat nearly my entire life and never had an issue. I've played longer matches than that, although I probably haven't played in any heat worse than that. And I still could easily have stayed out there and gotten into serious trouble without even realizing it. I was very lucky the match ended when it did.

And the real kicker was that the match didn't really matter much - my team lost every other match we played that day. Dammit. And insult to injury? In the match I played on Saturday (and I played it VERY carefully mind you), I think I tore a tendon in my wrist on a backhand towards the end of the match. Right after I'd found out that we were definitely out of contention for the finals.

Oh well. I've been saying I was going to hang up the rackets for a few months after all this is over. Guess I really get to do that now, seeing as my wrist hurts like hell and I couldn't hit a two handed backhand to save my life. On the bright side (because there always has to be a bright side), it's just my wrist and not a leg, knee, or foot. So I can still run. And I did just that this morning - 4 miles in Gulf Shores heat. Hello marathon season, nice to see you again. I personally don't want to look at my tennis rackets for a LONG LONG time.