Not To Be Trusted With Knives

More Random Thoughts on The World Record Hockey Game – #lg4cf

September 7, 2011 by Beth

• There was a dent in centre ice from having dropped the puck more than 2,300 times over 10 days. Seriously.
• I got two new nicknames during the course of the game. One was “The Hobbit” – because I would come into the rink from RV World wrapped in my blanket. It was just too damn cold to get out of my bed without my blanket. The other was “Timbit” – this was what Bree started calling Sarah Willie and I due to our short statures (and the fact that I play like a Timbit!).
• The arena was freaking cold. Apparently they had to keep it that way in order to zamboni the ice is less than 10 minutes, which was the maximum amount of break time we were allowed according to Guinness rules. Freaking cold.
• Scott liked all my witty tshirts. Every day he’s ask “What shirt do you have on today?”  Over the course of the 10 days, I rocked such shirts as “I’m blogging this,” “Not that kind of doctor,” “Zombie Research Society” and, of course, “BETH HUNGRY.”
• A lot of people have asked if we lost weight by playing so much hockey, but no one really seems to have lost much, if any. In fact, one of the women gained 12 lbs! When I got home after the game, I stepped on the scale and weighed exactly the same as when I left. However, when I stepped on the scale the next day, I was down 3 lbs. I’m pretty sure those 3lbs were 3 lbs of water that I’d been retaining in my sausage-like fingers after the game ended!
• Weird things happened to all of our bodies over the course of ten days. I mean, there were lots of things you’d expect to happen from playing a ridiculous amount of hockey – blisters, bruises, a concussion, a torn MCL, swollen knees and such, but then there was weird stuff. For example, Bree randomly had a fat wrist. No pain, no particular reason and it was just one wrist. Why would water be retained just in one wrist? We have no idea. Later, the wrist went back to normal and one ankle got fat. Why? No clue. Frankie got TMJ. How does one get TMJ from playing hockey?? I stopped sweating after about day 5. That’s not normal when you play hockey.
• The next time we do this, we should get some physiologists to follow us around to document the effects on our physiology. I think that would make an awesome journal article!
• It’s now two days later and I’m still unable to rehydrate, despite drinking water all day long. It’s like the water just goes right through me and I’m still all dry mouthed and unhydratable!
• Every person who has watched the clip of me on Breakfast Television has said to me, “You look really tired.”
• My six year old niece watched the clip of me on Breakfast Television, which also had an interview with Desneige, who made a very striking piece of artwork featuring the syringes and pill casings of all the drugs that her young son, Beckett (who has CF), had to take in one year. After watching it, my niece said to my sister, “I think I should give my donation money to those kids. They need it.” And she got her jar that she saves money for donations in and counted up how much she had and she donated. What a sweet kid she is!
• Very quickly after the game started, we lost all sense of time. By Day 2, all we knew was “It’s Day 2.” I could not have told you the date or even what day of the week it was, but I knew which of the 10 days we were on.
• For the last two hours of the game, all 40 players were dressed and on the benches. It was the first time since the first hour of the game that we had more than one sub at a time! I was actually on the ice when we tied the record at 10 am. When we set our new record of 10 days, 3 hours and 5 minutes, I was standing by the door and thus would have been the next to go on – you know, like if the game had gone to overtime. =)
• I remember when I was working on my PhD, when I got experimental results, I would sit for a moment and reflect on the fact that I was the only person on Earth who knew the fact that I had just discovered. It’s pretty staggering to think that out of more than 6 billion people, you are the only person who knows something. I can tell you that being one of only 40 people in history to have completed such a momentous feat is just as thrilling.
• A little while ago, Dr. Dan wrote a posting about how he didn’t see himself as an athlete, despite all his running, biking, yoga-ing, etc. ((I’d link to the article, but I’m too tired to go searching for it)). He is, of course, but he doesn’t see himself that way. I used to have that problem too, but I feel like completing this epic game has earned me the right to always and forever be able to call myself an athlete.
• My final medical count:
  • blisters: 12
  • fingers with skin that cracked right open: 4
  • major abrasions (i.e., ~1 inch x 1/2 inch): 2
• I wasn’t too worried that I would get injured on the ice, but I was constantly worried that I would do something really stupid, like fall coming out of my RV or take a tumble down the stairs and break a bone. Because that would be such a Beth thing to do. I’m pretty surprised it didn’t happen, actually.

• “Taking off my skates feels better than sex.”
• “Beth, you have such a nice personality, you could say the most asshole thing and people would just say, ‘Oh, I’m sure she didn’t mean it that way!'”
• “I really hope this game doesn’t go into overtime!”
• “Sleep deprivation, physical pain, and isolation. Isn’t that what people do to torture prisoners of war?”
• I was known as the girl with the blog who was also constantly tweeting. A few days into the game, Sarah W said to me “You keep having real people come to visit you. I didn’t think Internet people had friends in real life. YOU ARE MAKING ME QUESTION ALL MY STEREOTYPES!!” A few days later, she asked me, “Are you friends with Miss 604?”, but when I replied “Yes,” she went, “Oh. I was being sarcastic.”

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