whoooooo!!!

The fitness test is done...and over! Thank god! We left the hotel at 8am and headed to the track. I'm not going to lie, I was pretty nervous. Not that I doubted that I would pass, but worried about the "what ifs". What if I slipped on one of the sprints, what if I pulled a muscle...etc. You know, all those things that you have no control over...that is what I was worrying about. I just kept telling myself...you can do this, it is the same test you have run 20 times, this one is no different. The bus ride to the track was very quiet, and we were a small group (13), only the referees. The assistants were coming later for their test. Just as we boarded the bus...rain, and I don't mean just rain, but RAIN...sideways, it was crazy! But, by the time we got to the track, it was just a drizzle, and as we finished our warmup, it had stopped. The problem was that now the track was wet, and that made it slippery. So, for the sprints (40m), I made sure that I didn't start too fast so I didn't slip. I just had to make sure that I ran hard the whole way. Get this, ever single one of my sprints were 6.3....all 6 of them, weird, eh? On to the intervals (15om + 50m recovery). I wasn't too worried about these because I have done them so many times that I knew the pace, and last week I ran a practice test and did 15 laps. For the test we were doing only 10 laps, so I knew I could do this. I ran in a group of 4 girls and we worked really well together. We took turns leading and helped each other out when we needed it...it was good. It was such a great feeling to be finished and the best part...all 13 referees passed...awesome!

That evening we had the official referee dinner with members of the FIFA referees committed and the tournament organizers. We all got dressed up in our brand new FIFA suits (freshly tailored), boarded our bus, and went out for dinner. The food was amazing and at the end of the night, we were all presented with our official tournament medals! It was a great day!