Lac du Cres

The moral of today's story is that, while I may not understand a lot of French, the concept of "run around this lake until you can't feel your legs" was not lost in translation.

Tonight I had my first training session with my new team. I was very nervous, mostly because I have spent the last two weeks packing, flying, driving, packing, and running last minute errands instead of actually running. I did spend the three weeks in California running and lifting on a consistant basis, but I guess most of that went to waste as I made the final preparations for my trip.

I was also a little bit nervous because my new coach is somewhat of a legand here in Montpellier. His name is Laurent Puisegur and he retired last year after 10 years as the captain and circle for the Montpellier professional team and the French National Team. He won several European Championships and a World Championship, as well as being an Olympic medalist. Basically he is a world class handball player, and now he is my coach! Even though I didn't spend a lot of time with him when I came in June to do my try-out, he was one of the main reasons I wanted to be with this team. I figured I could learn a lot from a World Champion circle!

Anyway, tonight was just as it was described to me in June: run around the lake until you die! We showed up at the Lac du Cres at 7pm and had a quick word from the president of the club and the assistant coaches. After endless kissing of strangers (here it is 3 kisses everytime you say hello), we got down to the dirty business of preseason training.

Running for hours has never been my idea of a good time, but the girls on my team and Laurent made it as pleasant as possible. Laurent especially went out of his way to make sure that I was understanding things, and would take time to speak slowly or re-explain something if I had a confused look on my face. The girls were also really helpful and encouraging, and I felt like they were going out of their way to make me feel at ease even if we couldn't communicate that well.

As for the training session, we alternated running laps around the lake with push-ups, uphill sprints, ab workouts, and medicine ball throws. It was intense, but the atmosphere was upbeat and positive and I left feeling like this was going to be a fun year of handball.

I am particularly excited about our upcoming team trip to the Pyranees on Sept. 1-2, where we will spend a weekend camping in the mountains and doing rock-climbing as a team bonding experience!! Yayy!!

We will also play 4 games before our real season starts on Sept. 15- including one game against a Spanish team (in Spain, I hope!).

For now, it is time to rest and recoup to get ready for another grueling workout tomorrow. We will have practice everyday for the next two weeks except on Wednesdays, and now I know that we will use every minute of the 2 hours to the fullest! But I'm looking forward to it, and will definitely welcome the day we put away our sneakers (and the lake) in exchange for handball shoes and the gym.