Colombo U18 ITF Grade 5, Day 2

Saturday 5^th October 2013

It was a really good first day’s training today as we all got a feel for the club and the conditions while putting in two on court sessions either side of lunchtime and a gym session to finish off the day.

Despite still being a little jet-lagged everyone slept quite well last night and were up for breakfast by 8am. The options for breakfast were excellent; you could have cereal, eggs, toast, yoghurts to name a few and so I was a little surprised when I sat down next to Holly and she had fried onions, vegetable samosas and potato wedges on her plate!! I was thinking it must be a Northern thing and I had my assumption confirmed after she told me that she recently had seafood risotto for breakfast!!

At around 9am we got a taxi over to the club and we joined by Holly Hutchinson soon after. Holly isn’t able to get on the internet where she’s staying and it must have been at least 30 seconds before she was up to the tournament office to get the Wi-Fi code!!

We all warmed up together from 9.30-10am and then managed to get a full court to train on from 10-10.30am. As is always the case at junior events, everyone puts their names down for a practice court but then don’t turn up and when there’s only one practice court it’s always worth hanging around to see if people don’t use their court. I trained with Alex on one half court while both Holly’s hit together on the other and the main focus of the session was to get a feel for the courts and the humid conditions. Alex and I were quite used to the humidity after travelling out to the Caribbean on three different occasions this year but the girls were finding it a little more difficult. After warming up for 30 minutes Alex took a break for half an hour while the Holly’s stayed on and shared a half court with the WIN Tennis boys to play some points. Alex then came back on at 11am and joined Charlie Ridout and Phillip De Bruyn to play some points for another 30 minutes.

All three players found some good form during the morning session and at just after 11.30am we left site to go back to the house Holly is staying at for a shower and a fantastic lunch. We then all headed back to our hotel to relax for an hour before we went onto the hotel court for our second session of the day.

The hotel court is actually much better than the courts at the tennis centre and even though we have to pay to use it, it was definitely worth it. After warming up for 15-20 minutes we went into a lot of points and everyone once again found a good level considering it was only their first day of training. We stayed on court for about an hour and a half and then went straight into the gym where Alex completed a power session, both Holly’s did some strength work and I continued with my own strength programme as I prepare for the London Marathon next year.

Holly Horsfall returning Holly Hutchinson’s serve during the points at the hotel this afternoon

We were all finished by 5.45pm and after Holly Hutchinson had a panic while she raced around the hotel looking for her phone (it ended up being in her shoe in her tennis bag!) we went down to dinner at 6.30pm. The food at the hotel is very reasonably priced but the portions are quite small and once you add on the 26.8% tax a meal is around 2000 Rupees (about £10). With that in mind we decided to all go for the buffet which is 2,600 Rupees (about £13) and you can eat as much as you like! The quality of the food was excellent and the banter over dinner was just as good as both Holly’s lost at “Chase the Ace” which resulted in some hilarious forfeits – like I said yesterday, Holly Hutchinson is a great entertainer!!

Last day of training tomorrow before main draw starts on Monday.