I'm not talking warm climates, here, I'm talking heat. The recent game report regarding the Rapids' loss to Tapatio regularly makes mention of the hot weather conditions faced by the Rapids. Hankinson specifically states: While I agree that the MLS summers can get particularly hot and humid -- especially on the rubber-plastic surfaces in Chicago, Dallas and NY -- it seems odd to me to put players through this rigamarole in March. Our first afternoon game, and thus the first chance to play in a "hot game" with "humid temperatures" (humid temperatures, coach?) comes in May, at home to the Metros. A Colorado afternoon in May at Invesco -- seriously, what will the mercury climb to then? Maybe a whopping 80 degrees, but we certainly won't see any humidity. No, the real opportunity to play in heat comes when we travel to LA to open up Victoria street on June 7th. That's three months from now. Perhaps it's just me, but with two April night games in Colorado, if there was any weather contingency to prepare for you'd think it would be playing in cold and/or wet conditions. Maybe someone should send Hankinson game tape from the home opener in 1997, which brought both cold weather and snowy skies -- not to mention a fabulous Wolde Harris scissor kick winner. Realistically the "heat" factor in Mexico at the moment may just be exaggeration. Or not. It certainly wasn't an exaggeration on the recent Wizards trip to South America, where more than a few players questioned the logic of training in such heat during the preseason. OK, the Wizards players complained about a lot of other portions of that trip. As in everything but the safari they took. Anyhow, I'm just curious what others think about the advantages/disadvantages of hot-weather training in the preseason. For me, it seems an unnecessary strain for a club with a very small roster.
I also question why we are playing so many games. they just might not have anything left down the stretch. They started earlier in jan than any other team, played more games in florida, travelled more that other teams when they went to mexico to play even more games and now come back and have to play a game that means nothing on sunday and then back in plane for a game in New Orleans. Seems like too much for preseason.
Re: Re: Benefits of preseason training in hot weather? yeah, um, err. South Africa. My bad. That's what I get for posting before the morning mocha.
hot but high Sure, it happens to be hot, but the really good part is that Guadalajara is at about the same altitude as Denver. I want the new flatlander guys to have as much altitude training under their belts as possible when the season starts. And if the team had stayed in Denver there was was a good chance they'd have been snowed out since March is such a snowy month here. What better place to train than a city of the same altitude where it's unlikely to snow in March? The trade-off is that it can be hot, which it is. As for playing so many games, I'm glad Hanki's having so many opportunities to see how the newbies connect with the veteran Rapids. And I'm glad he gets to see how the young guys like Schmidt perform in the face of veteran opponents. And all of this in games that don't count toward conference standings. As long as nobody gets injured preseason, I think it's all good. Also, just curious, how many games would, say, a starter in the EPL play in a year? Preseason, season, and post-season? How does that compare to what our guys are doing this year?
My take on it is every year, we talk about the team getting a chance to "gel" or whatever because the roster always seems to be in such disaray until halfway through the year. Playing alot of games in preseason may get them comfortable enough to "gel" from the start of regular season. Of course playing in extreme heat doesn't make alot of sense to me. Garrett