Day 4 – Recovery Session

The lads all had to check out this morning so were leaving the bags in our room. Their ranting woke me at about 10h30 and I had an awful tired head on me. They were debating about the days activity, some decided they would go quad-biking whilst others were opting for the safari. First stop though was the beach and it seemed a tolerable place to recover from the previous days exertions.

Eoin was at his ignorant best, winding up Ana and then Kevin. The beach was deserted but we did have some good banter with two Phillipino lifeguards. One of them had a few well rehearsed lines of Irish as well as a keen interest in Irish politics, claiming Gerry Adams was a personal acquaintence. We must have spent two or three hours there and then everyone headed back to go off to their various activities. Myself, Rochey and Emmett got a taxi man to take us on a tour of Dubai. We covered 130km over nearly three hours at a cost of fifty euro. Well worth it but we all needed a snooze at various stages.

Then it was back to the hotel and I got a second wind when Micheal mentioned going to Fibbers to watch the rugby. Whilst waiting we tried to make a dent in our beer stock which is proving difficult to wear down. Taxi then to Fibbers and an extra cold pint of Heineken to get things motoring. The boys started to wake up and the pints were to our liking. The clock was ticking on them though as they had to leave for the airport at 01h. Just before they hit the road Dec and Conor arrived. I gather Conor had delivered an inspirational speech to Dec to get him out of his slumber to go to the pub.

I was having good craic with my new best friend Philly Ryan. He is Manager of the Clonmel team this year and he relived a few tales from his playing days as well as declaring that he wasn’t into all this sports science sh1t. We agreed there was still a place for the long hard slog but that games based training was the way forward. Good man, hopefully we will see them in Brussels in the future.

The tiredenss started to eat away at me and I made an executive decision and decided to hit the road after midnight. A pit-stop in KFC’s and then taxi back, i arrived just before the rest of the group departed. So all that remains is myself, Dec, Conor and Becky. Tomorrow we head for the Jumeriah Beach Hotel for a couple of chilled days in the sun.