DAY 4:THE TEAM COMES TOGETHER     11th February 2008

Guest Journal by Diana Matheson

Now that we are acclimatized to west coast time, we got up a little earlier than in the past few days, as we had two training sessions on the schedule.

Unfortunately, the morning started off on the wrong foot, as the hotel staff thought our breakfast was still at the old, later time. We had a long wait to get our first meal of the day. Such disruptions are never welcome. When the bread arrived, the race was on, the race to the toaster that is, with first place this morning going to Sinclair. Of course, the prize was the first bite of deliciously, toasted bread.

Still digesting breakfast, we then headed off to practice, breaking into groups for positional work and some more testing. My group, the midfield group, was short changed and didn’t get to do a jumping test. This was because the forwards group broke the testing machine!!

There was an advantage though, as the midfield group were the first ones to get the lactic acid test out of the way. Midfield rules! After the rigors of the yo-yo beep test yesterday, these tests were no problem.

 We were a little rushed between morning and afternoon practices as the drive to and from the training field is not a short one. We barely had time to eat lunch and have maybe have an hour of rest,  before heading back into the vans for the second session.

I think there is no doubt that we’ve been getting sharper as a team with each session. Slowly we are getting used to the new coaches and drills, and today was no exception. For the first time, I thought that today everyone looked fast and focused.

After practice, the coaches entertained us with some soccer tennis, men vs women. From what I could gather from the Italian profanities coming from the women’s team ( I could recognize these words thanks to the few select Italian words Tank has been teaching us), the men’s team squeaked out a win.

The ride home from the second practice was a long one, but Amy Walsh entertained us all with a song she has written about a bug on her yoga mat. I’m sure http://www.AmyWalsh.com will have all the details about how to order a copy of the song, perhaps with the soundtrack sung by Amy herself.

This is really about it for the day. Once we got back to the hotel we had dinner and then went to our rooms for the evening. It's time to see what’s on American TV on a Wednesday night!