Too old

It seemed like a good idea at the time when Fat Lad said we should train with a local team.

It made perfect sense, they would be much fitter than us, would run us ragged and we'd benefit from getting to play some football. Well tonight we headed off to a local sports centre, complete with running track to join in this team's weekly training session. He managed 600m running in the warm up while I managed just 400. I was wearing 3 t-shirts, a waterproof jacket and a pair of shin pads so I was carrying a little bit of weight. Also it was raining, correction, it was absolutely chucking it down!

We then had a little practice match with each player allowed a maximum of 3 touches. Personally I ran around a little, managed a couple of tackles, made some bad passes and remembered why I had played rugby throughout my teen years and into my 20s. I must however advise that for the first time playing football in around 20 years, it was a lot of fun, especially when I side footed a shot into the goal from around 18-20 yards.

Then things got a little more intense and we ran shuttles with intermittent breaks which were filled with 5 exercises. Remembering my hamstring injury which wrecked my early season I decided the squat thrusts were not such a good idea, so I started with sit ups and then varied it by throwing in some press ups. The work rate was good but the exercise which was supposed to be 8 repetitions was cut short to 6 and I felt we could all have kept going a little longer.

Next up was some endurance running while holding hands. Basically one player would run the 40m to a cone come back to the start, pick up another player, then they would run to the cone then back to the start before picking up another player. Once all the players had been picked up, the first player dropped off and the team continued the run, dropping off a player on each return to base until all players had run 8 times to the cone and back. This was a total 640m being run at 1/2 pace. I found it too tough and dropped after three runs as did the Fat Lad but then he went back in for a couple. I reckon in a few weeks I'll be able to stick it all the way through.

To finish we played another game of standard rules football. I tried a few tackles and missed even more. Passed the ball a few times and played it short a couple. My biggest mistake was missing an interception on a cross field ball which would have allowed me to send the Fat Lad away to score the winning goal, but I missed it and the opposition swept down the other end and scored it instead.

So the total run out was around 75 minutes and I burned 1035 calories with an average heart rate of 150. Not bad and I know I can work harder as I was really pacing myself because of the pain in my left Achilles tendon. I was also concerned that the twinging in my hamstrings and stabbing pain in my knee could turn into something more extreme. With more of the same type of training, I'll build the strength needed in these areas and increase my own stamina. More fun than just heading to the gym!!!