Wednesday 12th October 2011
It only rained a little today which gave us the perfect opportunity to get in a lot of training before the first round of the doubles tomorrow.
Where as last week we had to be at breakfast at 6.45am and then get the 45 minute bus journey to the courts this week it’s a bit more relaxed. We’ve pretty much got busses whenever and wherever we want them and the court are only a 5 minute drive away so after breakfast at 8am we were on our way to the courts at 9am. While Mia completed her warm up (and then went in search of her hat!) I warmed Julia up for her singles match for 45 minutes and then started Mia’s first session of the day. We worked on her strength and movement patterns with the medicine ball for a tough 20 minutes and then it was on court hitting purely with the doubles in mind.
Mia working hard with the medicine ball
We had a good session in very hot conditions and then made our way over to one of the other sites to watch Julia play her 2nd round match. When we got there Julia was still waiting to go on so Mia completed her strength programme and had a good stretch out before we got some lunch together.
Julia had a tough singles match against a tricky opponent but despite not feeling 100% she took a 4-1 lead in the first set before frustrations about her serve started to get to her. Her opponent then took full advantage and fought hard to win the next 11 games in a row to take the match 6-4, 6-0. After the match I walked back to the main club with Mia only to find out that Anais had to pull out of her match after losing the 1st set 6-0. She’d had food poisoning for the last couple of days and had been up most of the night so really it was a good effort for her just to step on the court!
Just before 3pm we were back on court for our 2nd session of the day which again was just doubles related. We worked on a lot of movement specifics and made sure that Mia knew exactly where she needed to be no matter where the ball was hit in the rally. We also tightened up her volleys and smash so that when she did get the opportunity to finish the point she did so in 1 shot rather than giving her opponents another chance to get back into the rally. It was another good session and after an hour and a half the rain started to come so we got the bus back to the hotel, completed Mia’s core programme for the day and then had another good stretch out.
Anais managed to come down to join us all for dinner at 6.30pm and she was looking a little better, I just hope that she’s ok in the morning to play her doubles match with Julia. Mia had a good days training today and I know that if she executes her doubles game like we know she can she’ll come out on top tomorrow.
Schedule for tomorrow:
Mia Smith (GBR) & Angelina Skidanova (RUS) vs Siriporn Phakamad (THA) & Ah Song (KOR) – 3rd round on, not before 11.30am
