He loves school and school loves him. He got a very good report at the end of his first year in "big" school and he never needs any persuading to get there in the morning. Obviously he can't stay at home during the school holidays so for the next 5 weeks, ad hoc arrangements are being made for him to visit various relatives and for my wife to use some of her days off, when she would normally work overtime, and some holidays to ensure he is looked after.
The first trip was to my mum's in Leeds where he had a great day re-arranging furniture and ornaments as well as going ton a bus trip to visit one of mum's friends. As my wife (hello my lovely Specks) was at a meeting in Cheshire, didn't get back until half seven, so couldn't pick him up, I had to forgo training on Thursday to get the little tyke. Speaking of "Tykes", Happy Yorkshire Day to all those currently living in (and exiled from) God's Own County!
Liam's next port of call is his grandparents who live in Kempston, near Bedford. We made the journey down the M1 in atrocious driving conditions as rain lashed us for most of the 150 mile journey. On arriving , My wife and I took advantage of the grandparent's babysitting service and had an all too rare night out.
I paid for it yesterday, feeling jaded for most of the day but still managed to fit in a visit to Liam's great grandmother's house before calling in at a friend's niece's daughter's Christening! I couldn't persuade my wife to have another night out, so it was a relatively early night at 11:00.
When I woke up at 5:30 I couldn't get back to sleep and spent most of the time until around 8:00 trying to kid my body that it just wanted to sleep, but instead the guilt from missing Thursday's training and Friday night's excesses, I decided to go training.
Kempston is served by two council run football facilities, each with a handful of fields available for teams to use. I chose the one down by Hillgrounds as my venue for this morning's session and began my self imposed torture. My warm up was two laps of a field, dropping the pace to walking to ensure I kept my heart rate at around 75% of maximum.
After my shuttles I completed 3 sets of 4 exercises. I ran from the goal line to the edge of the penalty area, back to the goal line, up to the halfway line, back to the goal line and then to the far goal line and back to the start point. I wasn't feeling too good (having eaten far too much yesterday afternoon and still feeling slightly jaded from Friday night's session around the bars and clubs of Bedford) and decided to try and maintain an even pace. After each exercise I was taking a minute's rest and after each set of four I took 3 minutes rest.
I was exhausted by the time I had finished all three sets and had no problems just jogging/walking my way through my warmdown. I knew I hadn't worked as hard as I had last Tuesday but I still felt better for the workout. Calories burned around 840. My average heart rate was down to 140 bpm and the troughs (recovery time) in my heart rate would seem to indicate that my fitness is beginning to come back.
I just need to keep working at it and make sure I get all three sessions in each week. It's Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday this week. Saturday will, I hope, also see my first assessment appointment of the season as my Supply League kicks off. The appointments have been delayed as there was some uncertainty over the future of a couple of clubs who had been demoted at the end of last season following financial difficulties. It seems that the uncertainty has been resolved and it's time for another season of notebooks, pens, pencils and hours in front of the screen making constructive comments about referee performances!
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