"Inside Rocket" is the name of the team, I believe. Their logo is awfully reminiscent of Johnny Bravo. In any case I hitched a ride with one of the Mainz captains and we got to Heidelberg comfortably before the 9am start time. After gathering and quatching for a bit the 40-odd of us went over to the track for a fitness test. Unaware that we'd be running anywhere other than the field, I didn't have my running shoes...but no biggie. It was a heart-rate/VO2-max test of some kind, involving a heart rate monitor and a jog around the track following a pace-bicyclist. The jog got harder and harder though, speeding up every 400m, until eventually I tapped out at 3600m with a heart rate of 198. It wound up being approximately 2.325mi in 18:30, or 7:47 average pace, which sounds easy (considering I've done 3.1mi at like 6:27 pace) but I haven't been running and it showed. Compare to my last VO2 max test.
Anyway after that we split into 4 teams and did a breakmark drill, then played a mini-tournament with games to 7. After breaking for lunch we had another game to 7 and then a combined scrimmage, which my team won (putting me at 3-2 for the day in scrimmages). I played fairly well, but I wasn't used to playing that much at that high a level--not every player is strong, but enough are that it was no picnic trying to play defense. I also had to play downfield a lot and was having trouble working myself into the offense at times, problems with timing and not pushing deep enough in my cuts. The biggest problem though was that each team had only three or four subs, so there wasn't a ton of rest. Lots of fun, though. Looking forward to tomorrow.
After the last scrimmage we listened to a little training advice, showered and then gorged ourselves on Greek food at a nearby restaurant. Nice.
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