Today with the U12s (& Kreuzberg)

Slow morning, breakfast with Jacky boy before Andreas picked us up and took us to the #1 footie shop in Berlin where it has every football boot under the sun plus can personalise. Prior to that I squeezed in a threshold run, running on a full stomach and effectively the canal out and back. Managed 12.5ks in 3.59s getting progressively quicker. It helped having the wind on my back for the return.

Next up was Schloss Strasse (where Berlin does most of its shipping) and caned the credit card mainly in Karstadt Sport.

PM we all went for lunch in Schoeneberg which neighbours Kreuzberg the famous Turkish area of West Berlin. There are 600,000 Turks living in Berlin and is the largest population outside of Turkey. They came as economic migrants in the 60s and have really helped to shape the Berlin of today. We ate at Hasir on Maassenstrasse and the food was pretty damn good again with the lentil soup, hummus and steak kebabs outstanding.

A short coffee stop before Jack trained with the Viktoria 1889 Berlin U12s, his age group.

The team and all round set up is very good with the first 30 mins all ran by one of the senior players in the team. He had them doing exactly as he said (translating at the same time) all at the tender age of 11/12. In fact the coach hardly spoke for the entire next 2 hours.

I forgot to mention that the track here was used by the American athletics team at the last World Championships in Berlin a few years ago. They wanted the same track as the Berlin Olympic stadium and that's exactly what they got.

Another good day but cold and wet. Spring better hurry.  Jack and I are both missing the 4 back home.

FC Viktoria 1889 Berlin U13s

Slept in and missed my run opportunity ahead of the drive over to south west Berlin to Viktoria Berlin.  They are a feeder club for all the pro clubs and have 60+ youth team run by Andreas.

Today the plan was to train with his U13s (so the born in 2004 age group), a year older than Jack.  The session was over 2 hours and he had them working really hard from the off.  The training was primarily endurance focussed with a lot of running and ladder drills one after another - more akin to a track session.  Then he overloaded with skills to see how they fared once tired. The U13 boys were all tall and lean.  Jack did ok as well as in the match situation.

I then agreed to meet all back at the hotel as had brought my running gear with. And so a quick change and I ran the route through the wealthy former western Berlin suburbs (with massive houses on small pebbled streets). The sun post midday was no longer to be seen and the wind was cold - it always is here and the wind comes directly from the Russian plains. 14kms in 4.40. ish.

A quick lunch and then headed with Andreas into town for shopping and other errands to the new Hauptbahnhof.

Dinner this evening was in the Mitte area of Berlin at 'Monsieur Vuong' a Vietnamese restaurant.  'Mitte' is a great little area in central Berlin with loads of brilliant restaurants and boutiquey shops - it reminds me of Soho in NYC.

Another pretty cool day.  Here are some of the pics and have brought out the BIG camera again:

 Jack:

Andreas and Jack:

 Keepmeuppies: