First Week's Sore Muscles

We had a first successful week. It started with a running session monday morning. Because getting the girls fit is one step towards selfconfident empowered female football players. So we ran up the hill from Taghazout to the small mountain village above. It was the perfect weather for running: the air was still fresh from last night's rain, but the sky was already sunny and blue. So we made our way up, it's about 5 km and it starts with a really steep part followed by a lightly ascending road winding up the hill.
But for totally untrained girls it is hard to run ap a hill just like that. So when we say running, we actually mean, we were running a few metres and then collapsed into a trot breathing heavily. First drops of swet started to run down our foreheads and there was the realization that we had just started to run maybe 300 metres of the 5 km! 
So with strong will and some pride to not give up right away we made our hard way up and saw that it was already worth it just for the awsome view! (Next time we will take the camera and make some pictures for you guys). Viewing the first house of the mountain village gave us a good ease and the way back down the hill rather felt like flying compared to the heavy slow trot upwards. When we arrived in Taghazout, we were so proud of ourselves and so happy and high on the fresh oxygen that we immediately knew why we did this energywasting crazy thing in the morning.

Coach Kaja, Yassmina and Raja after early morning run

The next day (tuesday) we had our first football session. Due to not having a football and not being enough women, we were lucky to hear that the guys were going to play one game at the beach in the afternoon. So we spoke to them and they welcomed us to play together with them. But since we came a little bit later to the beach and since we also wanted to improve our team spirit, we first did our own warm up before accompanying the guys in their game. And a first warm up that makes everyone's heart thump for your team is the football running ABC. A great exercise where you run in a line with your team mates and all imitate the first person's movements. You can include some great warm up exercise here and it's easy and flexibly expandable. We can not stress enough how good the football running ABC is.

When the girls were asked if they can feel anything from the running, they started to grin and nodded "Yes my butt hurts, but it's a good thing!". So off we went into the game. The start was a little reluctant since the women were a little shy and didn't quite feel like they had the right to get the ball. The guys were friendly and open, but still very dominant and set in their movements and behaviour. But after the first ten minutes or so the timidity gave way to some wild enthusiasm and made the girls go and get the ball and fight with all their power to support their teams. The guys were encouraging them shouting thrilled "bien joué!" everytime one of the women made a good move. The game was fast, fun, exhausting and very fair and kindly played.

After the game we walked back from Panorama Beach and talked about the initial shyness, the guy's behaviour, the good moves and the game in general and all agreed that we can totally play with the guys more often if they are always being so cool about it.

The next morning we went running up the hill again and it was hard again, but the moment of being at the top and flying downwards gave us the same thrill like the first time and we did an extra stretching session afterwards to heal our sore muscles. But after that we all agreed that 3 days of training were enough for a beginning and that we all deserved a break.
So all in all it was a very successfull first week. We will see if the little girls are still in for a game on sunday morning. Tomorrow we will give them a little reminder to keep them all motivated for the sunday football game. We will see, incha'allah!

on our way to Panorama Beach