Running scared in Spain

By Pete Sanderson

"You do not have to be fit to be a referee," I told my colleague at uefa.com. "All they do is run around a bit and blow their whistle a few times - it's an easy job."

Fitness first
I could not have been more wrong. My suitcase had barely touched the floor at my room in the Madrid training camp for the 13th UEFA Introductory course for international referees before I was summoned to the office of UEFA fitness instructor Werner Helsen. I was informed that I would be up at the crack of dawn the next day and discovered - to my horror - that my first task would be to complete a physical challenge.

Cooper trooper
Once the endless barrage of swear words had stopped whirling around my head, I politely asked what exactly this physical challenge entailed. "Simple," said Helsen. "You must run an absolute minimum of 2,700m in 12 minutes to pass the Cooper Run along with the new referees. This will be shortly followed by a series of 50m and 200m sprints. If you fail - you are NOT fit to referee a UEFA match." Ouch.

Famous witnesses
The next morning, after a painfully healthy breakfast, the troops, including your intrepid reporter, were whisked off to the athletics track next door to a Real Madrid CF training session, where I learnt to my horror that my run would be witnessed by football gods such as Luís Figo, Zinedine Zidane and David Beckham.

Jelly legs
A gruelling warm-up preceded the final instructions: "To pass this test you must run 2,700m in 12 minutes - that is SIX laps of the track and another 300m MINIMUM - is that clear?" To my dismay, around 27 enthusiastic responses echoed around the stadium. By this point, my stomach was turning and my knees felt like jelly.

Training regime
The gun fired. We were away and all I could see before me was a wall of incredibly athletic limbs with quadriceps to rival the onlooking Roberto Carlos and six-packs like turtle shells. These guys had been training for this moment for three months. By contrast, the only sport I had dabbled in since Christmas involved my right arm and a pint of beer.

English lesson
The first lap was hell. I elected to stay with the frontrunners but gradually began to fall back as the pace quickened. In the second, I had found my place in the group towards the back of the field and was starting to wonder whether Beckham and company would be witnessing my final hour. The third lap was perhaps the worst, my body aching all over until I was reminded as I hit the 1,200m mark that I had six minutes to complete another 1,500 metres. By lap four I was holding on to the pack for dear life but giving the nearby Georgian referee a lesson in English expletives.

Dedicated professionals
Somehow, and I will never know exactly how, I actually came through the test, completing the 12 minutes with 3,000m and two incredibly tight hamstrings under my belt. I also scraped through the sprint tests with the final 200m easily the most painful 28 seconds of my life. I spent the next two days walking like I had gone 12 rounds with Mike Tyson at his devastating best and ruing the day I ever questioned the fitness of top referees. This was one day I definitely deserved my early bath.