Saturday 12th February 2011
It was all about preparation today as we put in a great days training to get ready for main draw which starts on Monday.It was an early start this morning as we met for breakfast at 7am and were warming up around the hockey pitch by 7.40am. We had decided to train early so that we could get on two courts from 8-9.30am (before the matches started at 10am) and make the most of a full day to get more used to the altitude as well as the courts. However, when we got to the courts the grounds men were still putting down the chalk lines on the courts so for the first 15 minutes we were moving from court to court! We were joined this morning by Yasmin Ebada who was top seed last week and beat Farah in the second round. It was good to have her on court so the girls could all hit together and I could go around and work with each of them individually. We ended up doing almost 2 hrs and then moved onto centre court to do some leg work including stair sprints, medicine ball lunges and calf raises;
We finished off the session with some core work and then had good stretch out before walking across the cricket field back to the hotel for lunch and rest.In the afternoon we were on court again and the players dictated exactly what they wanted to do and how long they wanted to do it for. We trained between 3-4.15pm on the match courts followed by a long cool down to let the legs recover from a tough day on the clay.It was an early dinner this evening as the girls needed to catch up on some internet time! Time was mainly spent on Facebook but I think there was a brief email in there somewhere to their parents to let them know they’re still alive!!
