Training XLVII

It's been a busy weekend off field with preparations being made for my son's 4th birthday (tomorrow) and his party on Saturday (yes the date is closed). In between all this mayhem I went along to Day One of the latest Basic Course for New Referees arranged by my County FA. I went along to see my friends in action and it's good to be able to report that their enthusiasm for the role of Instructor shines on through.

Eek, Chuckles Elder and Younger, Jimmy2bob, Deefor and Fearless all delivered their pieces and when I left (to sneak off home to watch the rugby on tv) they were pretty much on time. I also had a long chat with Baz about a mutual friend who had a great game on Sunday morning, going as far as using an old referee's trick with an added twist. I can't share as it would spoil the joke but it's one I might try myself in a few weeks.

With no games for two weekends Fat Lad and I were feeling guilty. One of us was feeling a little jaded after enjoying the rugby on tv yesterday (well done Ireland!). So there was no way I was going to miss tonight, even after a communication breakdown meant my son was left at nursery for 45 minutes longer than intended (oops! Sorry Liam!). Junior Fat Lad decided he wanted to tag along and as expected, he romped around the track as if he didn't have a care in the world.

We went for a hard HI session tonight. We started with the usual warm-up before setting off to run 800m (2 laps). I managed the first run in 4m18s ... not particularly fast but I was trying to blow away the cobwebs. The next set was 4m30s, the third was 5m8s and the last, with a gut wrenching effort, was 4m40s. 2 minutes rest between each run was fully warranted and I was out on my feet after the last set of two laps.

After a 3 minute rest we then ran single laps. My first was 2m3s, second 2m6s, third 2m10s and the last was 2m13s. Fat Lad was a good 20 seconds inside my times on the double laps but was only beating me by a handful of seconds on the singles. The warm down was very welcome as it signalled the end of the toughest session we have done in nearly 3 months.

So a very hard workout, with 1131 calories (nearly as many as I did in a recent game) burned off. Average hr was 85% and a max of 99%.