Championship Football Training For The Parish!
Last weeks walking went as planned and with no real problems. For a change I am not going to list times and distances this week, the only important thing was the total mileage covered was 60 walking. My news from last week was that I was in Southampton and I played at Southampton football club on the Thursday in a charity football match.
What an incredible experience. A guided tour of the club on arrival, meet our ex professionals (in our case Jason Dodd and Gordon Watson) who would be playing alongside us, quick sports massage from the physios (you now know what I am like as regards sports massage) then onto the pitch for a warm up and then the game. I realise that most reading this may not be interested in the details of the game so I will skip through this part. The relevant bit is that I played as hard as I could and had a great running session. I must of played ok because a player from each side was chosen as man of the match, I was lucky enough to have got the "away" sides vote and was presented with the match ball all signed etc. All was great until Friday morning.
Friday morning went to move and to cut a long story short, I couldn't move!!! Back, calves and hamstrings all seized. Without any second thought I was on the phone straight away.Managed to get a sports massage in with a very nice girl called Jenny Lawson who works out of the Tennis Club at the Hampshire Rose Bowl (Cricket Club). Boy what a good job she did. Saturday a little sore but Sunday a marked improvement. I can recommend her to anyone in need of a sports massage in that part of the world. In fact I am now confident that I can go into my last "hard" week of Parish training whereas last Friday and Saturday I had serious doubts. Again, I knew I would be a little stiff the next day but had no idea that a change in training at this late stage would have such a big physical impact. It was something I had organised a while back so had sort of taken it into consideration where my training was concerned.
So this is it, with only 33 days to go I am entering my final week of hard walking before I start to taper it down next week. From today (being Monday 21st May) to Sunday inclusive I hope to complete 100 miles with 32 of those coming from walking the Parish proper to Peel on Sunday. I am nervous about the mileage and just hope that things like blisters etc are not a problem. At this stage if I get any kind of negative from my training I will stop doing whatever I am at the time and just call it a day for that session. Again, I feel I am too near to the event to take any chances and with the amount of mileage under my belt at the moment I feel so much better prepared than at the same point in time last year. So fingers crossed and time to hit the roads again.
As I only got back from the UK yesterday I have not had time to look for any walking related songs so I hope to have some in for the next entry.
