Training XX

After last night's little run out at Liversedge, the Fat Lad and I treated ourselves to a recovery session. We had our usual warm up and then embarked on a 30 minute slow paced jog around our usual field. We clocked up something like 4K in that time and I felt a lot looser when we finished than I did this morning when I rolled out of bed.

We had a little chat about last night's game and he reminded me of my demonstration that it's not just the legs that need the cobwebs blowing away. On one offside signal (and it was only one!) I raised the flag in one hand and then swapped it overhead like some sort of newbie first time assistant!

I think part of the reason for this was the home club committee asking us to run "left wings" instead of the usual "right wings". With that part of the touchline on the "rights" getting hammered week in, week out, they had re-seeded that area on both sides of the field. In addition the goal area in the bottom goal mouth was also re-seeded and they wouldn't allow the goalkeepers to warm up in those areas. This of course is all part of a club's preparations for a new season and we helped out by doing "lefts" as mentioned above.

Tonight's sessions was an easy one, as intended, and I burnt 794 calories averaging 78% max heart rate and maxing at 92%. Friday night's training is cancelled as CE is refereeing a game and I'm his 4th official for a Conference North team and a Football League Division Two team. Fat Lad and Zico are coming along to hassle me, which won't take much doing as I first have to learn how to operate an electronic board to signal substitutions - should be fun!

Mondays training session is another mock test and next Wednesday might be another recovery session. Next Friday I start a 3 day International Youth Tournament based in Huddersfield featuring teams from a wide range of countries. In previous years teams from Ireland (North and South), Italy, France, Canada, USA, Poland, Sweden and of course England have appeared. The competitive age groups are at U10-U15. It's always competitive and always very tiring - should be a very good test of my training.