BEAVERTON — It felt like summer camp at the Timbers Training Facility on Thursday. Nothing but sun hung over the pitch as the No. 2 team in the Western Conference ran through a practice that involved a series of mini games like 2 v 2 soccer volleyball, a hybrid soccer/basketball game and a competition where teams held hands in circles while racing to juggle a ball toward a trash can. There were smiles, laughs and a bit of smack talk — with the only thing interrupting the vibes for a club unbeaten in its last seven matches coming after training had concluded. “I think fun has to be a part of training,” manager Phil Neville said. “And we’ve made it a part of what we do at this football club.” Then Neville flinched, grimaced and let out a long F-bomb underneath his breath. “I’ve just been stung,” he said. “Was it a bee?” asked a member of Portland’s communications staff. “It was a bee,” Neville said. He took a moment, the room laughed, then, just as his Timbers have for the last two months, he continued on. “We trained well on Tuesday and Wednesday. We trained really hard and today we needed some fun and some freshness…sometimes they need to not hear my voice.” With the form Portland’s on, who’s to argue with Neville’s methods? On Sunday against San Jose, the Timbers will complete a demanding portion of the schedule that saw the club play four out of five matches on the road. It’s a stretch of games that’s seen Portland draw at Austin, win at Kansas City and draw at home against LAFC before an impressive 4-2 victory on Sunday at defending MLS Cup champion LA Galaxy. That win was Portland’s third of the season on the road — equaling last season’s total. Surpassing it on Sunday may take a fair amount of firepower against a head-scratching San Jose squad. On one hand, the 11th-place Earthquakes appear to be reeling, with losses in three consecutive matches. On the other, San Jose has equaled Portland’s league-high 20 goals on the season and is facing a Timbers team whose defensive form hasn’t been the best lately. After opening the year showing significant improvement on the backend, the Timbers have regressed in recent weeks, allowing seven goals in their last three games. “Last week we went three-nil up and we just lost a bit of concentration on the state of the game,” defender Finn Surman said. “We have to be smarter with managing it. There’s multiple reasons why or how we conceded two goals last week and we’ve looked at that and how we need to be better. “The last couple of weeks before that, we conceded five goals. Two of those were penalties, two of those were from free kicks and one was from a player. Those penalties and free kicks come from not poor defending, but silly mistakes and lack of concentration. I think if you take those out, then we’ve conceded one goal in those previous two games. The positive thing is that something that we can definitely work on is just the concentration.” The offense has had no such problems lately. In the same three-game stretch, the Timbers have scored 11 goals with the offensive attack figuring to only strengthen as designated player Jonathan Rodriguez finds his legs. After missing the season’s first seven games, Rodriguez has been coming off the bench the last three and found the back of the net for the first time in Los Angeles on a 76th-minute penalty. Rodriguez drew the foul when he broke loose after a Finn Surman longball up the pitch. “The positive thing about our team is we have willing runners and boys that will run all day,” Surman said. While Sunday ends one tough stretch of the season for the Timbers, May offers its own challenge. Portland is scheduled for seven league matches and one U.S Open Cup tournament game in the month. It’s a portion of the season that will surely test the depth of this Timbers roster. Then again, here at the tail end of the season’s first big schedule test, players holding hands and falling just short of singing Kumbaya together has Neville excited for the challenge. “You saw this morning in training, they like being around each other,” he said. “They’re all forming bonds and friendships, and when we go on the road, the away performances in this league are so difficult, but it feels like we raise our game a little bit more away from home. We play with a little more freedom away from home. “This league is one of those where if you start winning games and get on a roll, you get real momentum. Just like last season, we were losing games on the road and that momentum takes you to more losses. We want to keep this up.” This article originally appeared in The I-5 Corridor. -- Tyson Alger