It's been the longest week (Part Two)

To follow up on the other post about the last week, there's been some other things happening which I wanted to mention.

One story as been unavoidable and that was the shocking news from The Netherlands where an Assistant Referee, Richard Nieuwenhuizen, was attacked by players after an U16 game. After the attack he collapsed and despite being treated in hospital, died the next day. What made this all the more tragic was that his son was playing in the game and may have witnessed the attack. All amateur football in The Netherlands has been suspended this week as a mark of respect and there is a campaign on Twitter to mark this weekend as #RespectforRichard weekend.

On a lighter note, one of the oldest questions was answered as scientists conducted experiments to see how tall they could build a Lego tower. My son is a big fan of Lego and our house is full of mini-figures, which are his chosen reward when he achieves something special at school. It seems that if the bricks could be perfectly aligned and the wind dropped to zero, the tower would go as high as 2.17 miles before the bottom brick would fail!

As regular readers may know I have two other passions in my life apart from football, one of which is Star Wars and the other is music. This week I found that an American man intends to build a full size (but unfortunately non-operational) Millennium Falcon. Sensibly he seems it a means to help local people develop their skills, as well as a fantasy made real. Great project!

From the world of music I bring news of a useful piece of spam mail. When buying tickets online for concerts I often find that I receive "promotional" items detailing forthcoming events and the majority of these don't interest me. The one that arrived on Wednesday advised of yet another pre-sale (oh great) at an event many months away (no surprise) in London (well there's nothing new) involving Bruce Springsteen (whoaaaa!). Yes The Boss is playing three dates in the UK and I've not seen him before so I took advantage of the pre-sale and with a booking made at a Travelodge in Central London, there's no need to rush home afterwards.

The last thing from this week was the arrival of a software instructor at work who was delivering training in a new programme. As the training was progressing I could see his eyes frequently drifting over my shoulder to the filing cabinet behind and I couldn't figure out why. When I turned around to see what he was looking at, he asked the question, "Are you a referee?" (he'd spotted my FA mug which I bought using my FAMOA points a few seasons ago).

It seems he was also a qualified official but for the USSF in Chicago back in 2009. He gave up as he wanted to go back to playing but was more than likely to renew his licence as he had suffered a knee injury which might need some surgery. His 23 year old daughter was also a referee and I believe she still officiates. What a small world ...

And in late news, my replacement game has just been called off so this is the time for some Christmas shopping!

Training 4.13

5... 4... 3... 2... 1...

Training is rarely fun at the best of times and when you have to train on your own, it's that little bit harder. Tonight, for a variety of reasons all my training partners had to be elsewhere so I trotted down to the field on my own.

I had plenty to think of while training (slightly more than ... breathe in, breathe out) as I had managed to cross a few things off the "To Do" list. I'd finally completed my son's passport renewal, sent off his request for leave during term time to his school, booked some additional days in the school holidays, booked a double day ticket to Alton Towers and also an overnight hotel stop in between.

I also managed to pick up a session next Thursday delivering some training to a promotion seminar. Last year I helped those hoping to go from level 7-6 get a basic understanding of the assessment process, the assessor and the assessor's report. This year it's identifying handball, based on a training session delivered to the National List Referees, Panel List Referees and the National List Assessors for the candidates hoping to go from 6-5.

I've still got 2 days holiday booked at the end of August to look forward to as well, in case I have enough money to get tickets to the Leeds Festival. But back to tonight's training ... with just me to keep myself in check I needed a simple routine to follow and they don't come much simpler than run a while, rest a while, run some more, rest some more, etc.

I did my warm up run on just over 5 and 1/2 minutes, then my shuttles and was ready for the main event after 11 minutes. I ran for 2 minutes, walked for 1 minute and repeated this 3 times with an extra 2 minute rest after the 4th run, taking my walking time to 3 minutes. That was one set and I did a further 2 sets after that. My pace was pretty even, except when covering the hilly part of the field, so that I covered roughly the same distance on all three sets. Well that's not entirely true ... set one was about 50m longer than sets 2 and 3.

I did my usual warm down walk and jog but finished off with some deep stretches. Since being ill last weekend, I've found my muscles are grumbling even after the slightest of exertions, so I tried to give the major groups a good stretch off before heading home.

Calories 1017, average heart rate 83%. Click the picture for a larger version