Physicals and Testing

The first two days of Spring Training with the Twins consisted of getting all your physicals done, doing the fitness testing as well having a light workout on the field.

Day 1
So day 1 with Twins finally came. All that was on the agenda was our physicals and the mile run, which is probably the most dreaded part of this Spring Training along with the 300yd shuttle run. Physicals with the Twins was a lot less painful then it was while I was at the Phillies. Last year it took me 6 hours to complete all my work for the physicals, this year it took me less then 3 hours. Once physicals were done, we ran, stretched and threw, then got ready to run the mile. I'm in the Extended Spring group, so we had to run the mile last. I was pretty confident heading into the mile that I would make it under the required 6 minutes 30 seconds after all my offseason training. To run the mile we had to run 4 1/3 laps of Field 1.

Once the mile started I tried to keep a constant pace up for the whole time, which turned out to be a good strategy as I saw some people that started out hard fell off the pace in the 3rd lap. As we completed each lap we got told what the time was. After lap 1 I was at 1 minute 25 seconds, lap 2 was at 2 minutes 52 seconds, I didn't hear what I was at at the end of lap 3, but the main thing is that at the end of lap 4, my time was 5 minutes 54 seconds, which I was extremely happy about.

Day 2
Today was our first official day of practice. Everyone was in full uniform and the sun was out, so it was a perfect start to our first full day on the field. We worked through various stations and fundamentals as well as throwing a bullpen. This was the first time I stepped on a mound to throw in over 2 weeks, so I was a bit rusty at first, spraying my fastball up, but once I settled down, my bullpen ended up to be pretty good.

To go along with the mile, the other conditioning test is the 300yd shuttle run. What it is, is cones spread 25yds apart, and you have to run up and back until you total 300yds. Anyone thats good at maths will know you have to run it 12 times, so 6 times up and back. The time we had to do it in was 1 minute, and I did it in 58 seconds each time. After you do it the second time, your legs feel like jelly.