Saturday 28th January 2012
There were a lot of unhappy faces at breakfast this morning as everyone had endured a terrible night’s sleep (apart from Jack who slept like a baby!) and almost everyone (not me though!) were covered in mosquito bites!
Nonetheless it was training as normal and we had a good practice from 9-10.30am where once again the main focus was getting used to the altitude and the bouncy courts. We also mixed in a few points to end the session and much to my surprise everyone was finding a good range and execution on their shots. After practice the players all got out their strength and conditioning programmes and very professionally went through their scheduled fitness for the day.
After lunch we headed back to the hotel and were told that 2 twin rooms were available in the “new wing” which meant that Dawn & Mia and Jack & Tom had the chance to move into a much better room where they’d hopefully have a better night’s sleep!! Dawn & Mia jumped at the chance and were all packed up and in the room before you could know it but the boys took a little bit of convincing that the £4 extra per night for a much better room, better bathroom and shower and a fridge was worth it!! In the end I think the fridge sold it for them and they then moved their stuff into the new room. I on the other hand was still stuck in my old room but I did later managed to move to a similar “old wing” room but this time in was in the main building which hopefully will be much quieter with less bugs!!
We were back on court from 3-4.30pm for our final session of the day which mainly consisted of point play in preparation for the boy’s qualifying matches tomorrow. The session was again good but the players soon realised that the clay got very slippery as the day went on and Jack in particular took a superb fall.
Funnily enough almost exactly 1 year ago at almost the same time of day on the same court one of the group from last year ended up in the same state:
.jpg "Beth and Jack taking a tumble!")
The boy’s then signed in for qualifying before we all had a good cool down and stretch out. After going back to the hotel to shower and change we headed out early to the Fairview Hotel for dinner which was where we spent almost every dinner last year with the Bath IHPC team. We were slightly early for dinner so we killed a bit of time playing some chess before heading into the restaurant and straight up to the buffet pasta bar. At the pasta bar you can basically choose however much pasta you want and then add vegetables / meat to it and the chef will cook it all up in front of you, add a sauce of your choice and then that’s your dinner – all for £8 which we thought was great value.
After dinner we walked the short 10 minute journey back to the hotel and then all had an early night in preparation for the big qualifying matches tomorrow.
Schedule for tomorrow:
Victor Gurevich (USA) (UNR) vs Jack Large (GBR) (UNR) – 1st match at 10am
Oskar Michalek (POL) (UNR) vs Tom Hulme (GBR) (UNR) – 2nd match after 10am
Winners to play final round of qualifying later in the day
