INTERNET, TRAINING AND TESTING    August 28, 2010

Unfortunately, the internet has been down at the hotel for the past day. It's strange how much we have come to rely on it. Luckily for us, we have been kept busy and we do not have much free time to really miss it.

My biggest upset in not getting access to the internet was that I was unable to wish LSK Kvinner  good luck in their match today. I was also unable to make my Skype telephone calls. My apologies, but really not my fault.

It is SOOOO hot here that we are having a hard time running around in it. When we have water breaks everyone takes a seat, throws water all over themselves and guzzles as much as they can take in during the minute or so that we have. We have not started weighing ourselves before and after training sessions yet, but this is probably a good thing as I do not want to know how much weight we are all losing. We do the best we can to replenish and hydrate all the time, but anyways, it's probably best not to know….. that’ s a professional way to approach things right?

The squad has almost finished with our team testing. All the data on weight, fat percentage, jumping and sprinting is done and in. All we now have left is the yo-yo test. This is probably not the hardest test that we have in our battery, but as soccer players the mere mention of a fitness test sends cold sweats trickling down our spines. This fear is amplified in that we know we will have to run the test in the sauna called "Rome."

We are staying at the same hotel as the Serie A team Cesari at the moment. They are playing Roma tomorrow. It is interesting to watch these professionals go about their business. I was especially unimpressed with the smoking. I was more impressed watching them train as they are a team that just came up from the lower division last year. I shall enjoy watching and following them throughout the year.

Watching them practise was interesting for a number of reasons. First, I enjoyed seeing how similar their training is to our own. Another thing is that they too make mistakes. I am a huge fan of European soccer and I watch teams from almost all European leagues. I am always so impressed with how skillful they are and how easy they make everything look. However, it turns out that they make the same mistakes we do in training

We are having a quite morning as we recover from the first few days of training and prepare ourselves physically and mentally for testing later in the day. I am enjoying the opportunity to catch up on my physiology and anatomy homework. It's a real bonus having more than one top athletic trainer and medical staff to consult, when I don't understand something and i need explanations and demonstrations.