As you have probably all heard by now we came away unfortunate in the final in South Korea when we conceded a last minute goal and lost to the US 1-0. All in all it was a very promising game that will boost our confidence for the upcoming Games and I guess we will just have to beat them when it really counts at the Olympics.

After travelling home from Korea we were given a week off from the daily grind with the team, but that by no means meant a break. Although we played a number of games while we were away it is more difficult to gain fitness while in competition and in fact we even lose a little due to the inability to train at our max day in and day out. Therefore, upon returning home our break is actually a heavier training volume, approximately 3 hours per day, which we must complete on our own time.

I have learned to get the hours in by being creative as I am sure you can imagine it is not an easy task to train yourself at a high intensity for that many hours a day. My days usually consist of a morning run with intervals and core work followed by an afternoon of pool running or biking followed by sprint work. I like to get my fitness by playing other sports as well and through various other activities such as hiking, rollerblading and kayaking. In our time off we still have to find the time to catch up on things that we have put off to travel with the team and train day after day.

There is often not enough hours in the day to catch up on running errands, paying bills, seeing our family and our friends, and having a little R & R time to ourselves. In fact, most of us look forward to heading back into camp so that our friends and families better understand and accept the fact that we need to nap between sessions and unfortunately don’t have time to meet up for lunch or a coffee. At times those close to us who don’t see first hand what we do day after day have a tough time understanding that this is in fact our job and we cannot afford to take a day off from here on in until after the Olympics are finished.

Thankfully, this weekend we will have a bit of time to get our lives back in order as we have both Saturday and Sunday as individual training days with approximately 75 minutes of training per day. That being said we leave for Toronto on Monday to play Brazil in a friendly match up that we are hoping will allow us to bring our consistent performances of late onto the pitch again so we can pull out a win against this powerhouse of a team. Wish us luck!