Day 33 of 300: Pickleball and a Funeral

Mar 26, 2026

My red Mizunos are dead. The sole peeled away from the shoe mid-session, rubber separating from fabric like it had been waiting for the right moment to make a scene. 173.7 km and 41 sessions on the clock. They picked a pickleball court in Lalitpur to call it quits.

I went to play pickleball this morning. First time. Garmin actually has a dedicated pickleball activity type, which tells you something about how mainstream this sport has become.

The session

Garmin labelled the whole thing “Recovery.” That stung a bit. I was moving, sweating, competing. But the numbers don’t lie. Average heart rate of 97 means I spent most of the session in zone 1 with some zone 2 mixed in. Only 90 seconds above zone 3. For comparison, the squash session on Day 31 averaged 92 but maxed at 155 and ran for nearly two hours. Yesterday’s squash hit 160. This was a shorter, tamer affair. It was mainly a doubles match to introduce our better halfs to the sport; an introduction for myself as well.

Training load of 19.8 is half what squash produces. Body battery cost of 4 is nothing. The body barely registered it as exercise. Part of that is the shorter duration. Part of it is the learning curve. You spend the first session figuring out the serve, the kitchen rules, and which way to hold the paddle. The intensity comes later, once you stop thinking and start reacting.

Recovery context

Training readiness woke up at 47 and climbed to 50 by mid-morning. Still moderate. Still carrying the load from Sunday’s football. Sleep was 6 hours, score of 68. Deep sleep came in at 15%, a huge improvement on the 3% before the football match. HRV weekly average is sitting at 50ms.

The acute load was 449 this morning, and this session only added 20 on top. Barely a ripple. That’s fine. Four days after blowing the load ratio to 2.8x, a recovery-level session is probably the right call even if it wasn’t intentional.

The shoes

The Mizuno reds were the first pair I registered on Garmin. January 2024. They were never running shoes. They were the court shoes, the gym shoes, the workout shoes. 41 activities across two years. Squash, football, weights, walking around Kathmandu. They did everything I asked and never complained. I barely used them until this year.

The sole didn’t wear thin gradually. It rubbed through in one spot and the separation spread from there, the rubber splitting away from the upper like a zip opening. By the end of the session I was playing in what were essentially sandals.

I need to replace them quickly. Something with decent lateral grip that can handle a court. The Hokas are for running and I’d rather not wreck them chasing a plastic ball.

Day 33 of 300. New sport. Dead shoes. The body called it recovery. The shoes called it retirement.

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