A View From The Training Ground

Oh man alive! Its Friday morning, the morning after the night before. Last night was the first pre season training session of the year with Ware FC. I woke up on the Thursday and the calfs felt fine, I had breakfast (Fruit & Fibre of course) and then relaxed and kept my muscles warm. During the afternoon I was doing some studying and at 4pm I had a bowl full of pasta. I prayed over it so that it would turn into a magical bowl of energy (or perhaps drugs), but neither worked. I waited for the bus, it didnt turn up, so I got a taxi. I arrived in Hertford feeling nervous and slightly apethetic. I went to Waitrose and got a bottle of Lucozade for a sugar boost.

I was kinda horrified to read on the website during the day that Ware had appointed a fitness coach, great! I turned up at the Meads and saw the group gathered. Pleasantries were exchanged between players and I was introduced by the manager as "this is one of the fans, he's turned up to throw up". Nice to know he has confidence in me. I was pleased to look at Wolfy and Matty Allen (2 centre backs) and see that they had been living in McDonalds all summer and needed to work some off. Matt was very encouraging and stuck by me through most of the session. He's 33 and is now a first team coach as opposed to a player. So here's what happened during the session...

The Warm Up - this involved jogging round the Meads as a group doing different aspects such as side to side, opening the gate, closing the gate, backwards. I was feeling slightly worried still but coped ok with that and joked how I this was further than I thought I'd get (not sure if that was a joke or not). This was probably about a mile or just over. We then spent 5 minutes stretching out everything.

20 Minutes - This was a killer. For 45 seconds we had to sprint at 80%, then for the next 45 seconds we'd jog and then the next 45 sceonds we'd walk. This went on for 20 minutes. This was punishing and during this process I got lapped twice (the circuit was quite small though). My legs were feeling like jelly, I felt light headed and my mouth was incredibly dry. That was very tough and at one point I thought I was going to pass out / throw up. But I didnt, I survived. I did notice towards the end that my 80% was around about someone elses 50% though. But that will improve hopefully.

Ball Skills - Ok so this was not something that I was expecting to do. I was under the impression that this was JUST fitness and the ball was not required until August. I began to panic slightly that this was where I was going to get shown up. The coach told us to get into 4's and I was hoping that there would one person too many and I'd have to sit down for the rest of the session, but alas no! I was in the group with Matt, Wolfy and Joe Stevens (he's the fans favourite player and one of the most fit). We had to get into pairs in our 4's (I was with Matty), for the purpose of explaining it A and B were together and C and D were together. The pairs would take it in turn to do the running. C and D would stand about 50 yards apart and wait there. A and B would be doing the work. A would dribble the ball down the length of the pitch and then lay the ball into C he would lay the ball out to B who would turn and then dribble back up towards D. B would then lay the ball into D and D would pass out to C. Got it? Good. After 5 minutes the pairs would swap so that we'd do running in splits. The coach changed things during this, such as doing overlaps and sprints. I actually enjoyed this stuff and wasnt doing too bad! It was tough work but the energy you get from a football is immense!

Mini Games - This scared the crap out of me even more. In our 4's we would play another 4. This was like actually playing with the Ware team. My quality was less than others but the enthusiasm and learning was high. We lost the first, drew the second and third. I set up a couple of goals but also nutmegged by the manager!

Working on the Toes - for this we got into pairs (I was with someone who I didnt know). We stood opposite each other and one person would throw the ball to the other who alternate between left foot volleys and right foot volleys. The next stage was volleys off the laces, then we did jumping headers and then the exercises that near enough killed me... You had to volley, sit down, get up, volley, sit down, get up, etc... then the next one... header, down, press up, up, header, down, press up. Absolute agony!! that was so tough. We then had a little competition between pairs to see who could keep the ball up for the longest. We didnt come lost which was a miracle, last but one, but still not last though!!

Warm Down - This was a nice gentle jog round the Meads in order to relax the muscles. Matt Allen lead it so it was always going to be slightly easier! We would do side running, backwards running (Joe Stevens tried to trip me up and failed - loser!), and then stretch out gently.

SO that was it! The first session down. Very very tired! But very rewarding too. Wolfy gave me a lift to the station and basically said that that was nothing and there was much harder to come. Tuesday will be bad as my muscles will still be aching from last night. which is encouraging.

Injury concerns!

The healthy eating is still going very well. Yesterday whilst studying Gizmo's madre offered burgers. i declined and instead went for a salad whilst the other 3 chomped on burgers. i didnt mind too much though. gizmo is trying to be watchful of what he is eating as well now. he's watching what he eats but seeming not to care ;)

I havent been able to get on the scaled since last time but i will try to asap. pre season training with the mighty Ware FC is meant to start on Thursday although rumours are that it may get pushed back 5 days. that could work quite well for me actually. having played football on wednesday (and quite well), I noticed that I had a calf strain. It was quite bad for 3 days but this morning it feels slightly looser. I would be gutted if it stopped me from doing training. tuesday night will be a good opportunity to try it out.

almost finished uni now, i got a 2 week extension on both my essays so its extended a bit, but thats no bad thing!! peace out.

Drop a size!

Hey people! You've missed me right? Thought so :). I was at church today and was playing a little penalty shootout tournament (yeah so Matt won, but whatever!!). But there was quite a big problem. I couldnt commit 100%. and the reason?? cos my jeans were going to fall down. seriously! I would have flashed the world which isnt appropriate at the best of times, let alone at church! So that lead me to two conclusions: 1) i'm losing weight quite a lot. 2) i need to buy some new jeans. I hate going shopping for jeans. for the mean time i shall wear a belt and hope for the best. once the essays are sorted then i'll shopping but not on my own. i'll probably drag a Hamer out to help me again, bribe them with a coffee and it will be sweet.

Weight watch: 15st 3lbs. (lost 1lb since Tuesday).

October 3rd 2006. Thats when we will be attempting to get the world record for the New York subway. I've checked out flights and theres some going for about £360 which I'm delighted about. I just need to confirm its ok with college and work. Peace out. A town. (as Usher would say).

Weight watch

Many of you probably thought I was going to have given up on the healthy eating plan. But I haven't. I've been eating very healthily (check out the dinner) and given up all nasty stuff. That includes ALL alcohol, chocolate, bbq's, crisps and fizzy drinks. Its a bit crazy but I've got say no to all of it otherwise I simply crack under the pressure! At the beginning of this I was 17 stone. Thats quite a lot hehe. But I got on the scales the other day and I'm now 15st 4lbs. Thats pretty cool! I was impressed. I reckon I'm aiming for 14st. There are now 14 days until pre season starts with Ware and lets be honest... im not gonna put weight on during that!!

I've been playing quite a bit of pool recently with Taf, the current score being 37-29. Its always been tight up until the last session when he opened up an 8 frame lead. In order to get some confidence back I played Dan. I won 18-5. Nuff said!! Now check this position out...
What would you do here? Taf was spots and I was stripes and was left on just the black ball. I was completely snookered!! Now for those of you that dont know the rules, I must inform you that if you don't make a decent effort to hit your ball then you forfeit the frame. Now the problem here is that all I could do was jump the white ball and hope for the best. BUT if i hit the green and THEN the black which goes in then I've fouled and lost the frame. So I had to just clip the black and keep the white ball on the table. I decided to hit it with a bit of power. I missed and the white ball hit the pocket and bounced off the table. A decent effort but still a foul. I ended up losing the frame.

Ah well. At least I'm losing weight!

New York, New York!

People, you know that I love the London Underground yeah? If not then let me explain VERY briefly. For years I have attempted to capture the world record for visiting all 275 London Underground stations in the quickest time. I have attempted this 3 times and thus far my PB is 19h 42m 24s, which should have been 19hours 12minutes - but for a train missed by 5 seconds very late on. oh and we also had to wait at Finchley for 24 minutes. SO it could have got close to the current record of 18h35m43s. Anyway! Thats what I do. Theres also smaller challenges that the Tube Challenge community do for "fun". these include Zone 1 and the All Lines Challenge.

Got it? Good, glad u understand! Let's continue...

Guinness recognise the London Underground as a world record worthy system and they also recognise one other... New York. (A cabbage to the person who works out where this is going!). Geoff Marshall, current holder of London and now living in the US, approached me with an idea. Lets do the NY system! There isnt a current record as people in the States dont care. Geoff is getting a team of us together to crack it. There are 468 stations on the NY system and Geoff thinks it will take just over 24 hours.

The idea is to do in the first week of October 2006. Its gonna be quality. As long as we complete it it sounds like its a sure fire world record. Happy days! Although its early days and not definately going to happen I reckon that I'd do it for charity and raise a bunch of dosh. What do people think about that then?!