- England's Chris Cracknell's latest diary as England prepare for the Dubai sevens tournament
- First leg of the 2009/10 World Series Sevens kicks off this weekend in Dubai
Now I’m 25 I’ve decided to go back to school to study personal training and strength and conditioning and as I haven’t studied for nine years it has hit me hard.
On Monday I read for three hours until my head heart so I called on Kev (Barrett, Saracens) and Jake (Abbott, Worcester Warriors) to take my mind off things. We had a good old chat about home and boys’ stuff and Kev and I headed to the mall for some ice cream. Basically this ice cream parlour is crazy, you choose your ice cream then the guys behind the counter do a little dance and throw your ice cream scoops to each other before finally putting them into cones – we just keep going back to watch the little dance!
Yesterday we ousted the coaches and ran the training session ourselves – the way we decided this was to have an ipod stand off, Ben (Ryan) took on Kev and lost 3-0. Basically you just choose three songs from your ipod and everyone has a vote on whose music they prefer. Ben went for Kings of Leon which I think killed his game because it was just too obvious, sorry Ben!
So, with the coaches surplus to requirements they had to think of there own game to play – bring on ‘The Bottle Challenge’- this is a game where you place a bottle on a chair, take nine paces back and throw a rugby ball at it, the first to knock the bottle off is the winner, a bit like a coconut shy. Ben reigned supreme and we haven’t heard the last of it.
Our swimming sessions have been a little hit and miss over the past few days. On Friday me and Kev overslept (I’m blaming Kev for not setting his alarm clock!) so on Saturday we made an effort and got there half an hour early. Then Sunday Brett, our physio, who takes the session, didn’t turn up so we were left with ultra competitive Rusty (Russell Earnshaw) who made us do underwater lengths and whirlpools! Some good did come out of the session with us naming Christian Wade, Eric the Eel, for his swimming skills!
Not only have we renamed Christian but we have named Bristol Rugby’s Mat Turner, Sanchez because he has the most ridiculous looking moustache, plus his banter is wearing thin – Turner it’s time for the razor!
Since last week we have been training hard and we’ve been to see The Sevens Stadium where it all kicks off on Friday. We have also trained with the Arabian Gulf team and yesterday we had a touch session with Mike Friday’s Samurai side. Today we are off before our final run out tomorrow.
Cheers,
Crackers