Wednesday morning arrived with the same 5:30 am alarm that had become my routine over the past eight weeks, but this morning felt different.
I pulled on my running gear in the darkness of my flat, laced up my trainers, and stepped out into the London streets that were still quiet and cold. The city hadn't woken up yet, but I had. My mind was already racing ahead to 2 pm, to Millwall U18s, to the match that would test everything we'd built.
I ran 6k in 33:54, a new personal best. The system noted it in my vision, Fitness 49/100, Cardiovascular Endurance 46/100, but I barely registered the numbers. They were just data points, abstract measurements that didn't capture what I was feeling.
Eight weeks of work. Eight weeks of drilling, coaching, teaching, and building. Eight weeks of trying to turn a group of talented but disorganized teenagers into a team that understood pressing triggers, recovery runs, and transitions. Today, we'd find out if any of it had actually worked.
