Week 44

Friday

Ugh…

My breathing space was limited with the back of my palm on my forehead. I let out an audible groan as I was facing down towards the floor but just a few inches off. There was more pain coming…

Week 51

I spent the better part of Monday travelling. It was rather bulky carrying my Winter jacket throughout the journey but I knew it would perhaps be for the last time so I put up with it not fitting into my carry-on baggage. Was great to see family again after eight months away and back in the Middle East.

My transfer papers arrived in the form of a letter so I’m armed wherever I was to go. I also got the e-mail confirming the success of my maintenance of my referee classification. I wasn’t worried about it at all but good news should always be a victory!

Week 14, 15 & 16

Slow stuff all-in-all for refereeing or at least I thought so.

Week 14

Absolutely swamped in the early part with studying for back-to-back exams that I didn’t have any time to think about refereeing or football whatsoever then. At the end of Week 14, our team travelled away for friendly match in the big city. I travelled as the team manager along with them.

It was an affair for a lot of behind-the-scenes organisation as the two game times had to be finalised and we had to search for a replacement keeper to keep the game on. One of my friends filled in there and I took him out for dinner as a thank you after the games.

Referee Match Fitness

I was watching a FIFA Futuro DVD video on referee fitness and gazed in awe at one particular clip showing multiple back-to-back counter-attacks done by both teams on the field causing the referee to run at full tilt all around the pitch. The amount of running was noticeably exhaustive however, it really opened the eyes of those who didn’t notice right away.

Week 5

Run

I managed to try out the Interval testing feature on my Garmin and loved it. It was time-based since Satellite locating doesn’t work indoors so I ran the 30/40 interval with my training partner. It was, of course, exactly what I needed with the High Intensity test. Out of nowhere, a chest/throat infection showed up for me a few days earlier and I was recovering but it had been a while since my last training run that I decided to run nevertheless.

You can see my run stats here.

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/434892961

Week 1 & 2

Plenty of work on referee education and powerpoints in Week 52 wrap-up. Having finished a few of these, I spent some time getting feedback from other referees to mould and be ready for the presentation. I got some good feedback and hope to prepare some good quality sessions.

Having finished blog week,

Futsal Referee Fitness Testing

To my surprise, I found out that FIFA has three different referee fitness testing systems for the various sports! I’ve been training for the FIFA HI test all this while in my football goals.

I’ve clipped out FIFA’s Regulations for Refereeing for the Member Associations here. This only contains the fitness testing component for referees for easy reference.

As a result I decided to have a run at the Futsal test in Week 52, two days after my HI run.

Here’s an example table

Week 52 Training

There’s been training here and there between the last bunch of blog posts. They had their own focuses so I didn’t want to interrupt and add this info in between.

HI Practice Dubai

So the second location for HI test training; Dubai. If India was hard, this was expected to be much harder given the humidity level and heat. Tiring was expected much earlier in the running.

The run was a little different this time because I was equipped with undershorts this time. It had been a long time coming; the search for the right pair. The ones I found in the past were ridiculously expensive. I finally managed to find the perfect pair for a decent price; oddly enough adidas.

HI Practice India

Plenty of photos on this post as my little cousin and niece were playing around with my phone and took a few shots.

So as promised I thought I would relay some experience on