I just played the best three hours of table tennis in my life. Pat and I headed to the games room on campus, and had three matches to the best of 19, a total of 43 games. Every single muscle in my body is completely exhausted. The worst are the soles of my feet, which are more sore than when I stood for five hours at the Strung Out concert.

We’d been planning to play for more than three months now, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it for a while. All week, I had been trying to develop some strategy to beat him, but couldn’t come up with a single idea since he plays with a strong backhand with a pen-grip. I decided to simply play more aggressively than him, and figure out his weakness on the fly. In the end, I just ran him around a lot, putting the ball on alternating corners or at an angle he didn’t expect. I can serve consistently now, and have gotten much better at controlling how long or short they are.

Almost none of his previous strategies worked on me. His quick serves to my right don’t do much anymore because I’ve been successful in balancing out my position at the table. His downspins don’t work anymore because the people at the club really make me work on my chops and my pushes. His rally hits to my left don’t work anymore because I’ve been improving my backhand for the last two weeks. My short game has become as good as his. The only thing he could do was serve a downspin to my left to force a weak return, which is something he figured out rather quickly.

I ended up winning all the matches, 10–5, 10–3, 10–5, but both of us agreed that they were the finest we’ve ever played. It was three hours of pure intensity, not only physically but mentally as well. Concentrating on the serve, the strategy, trying to figure out a weakness, adapting to an opponents, keeping track of the ball, I was ready to collapse when I got home.