Thursday 6th March 2014
Due to the tightness in Ben’s arm we didn’t get to train at all on court today but we watched some good tennis and had a good workout in the gym this afternoon.
After a little bit of a lie in we got the 8.30am shuttle to the restaurant for breakfast before walking to the courts so that Ben could see the physio again and we could also watch Katie Swan play her semi-final against Hana Mraz from Slovenia.
Both players fought hard and had to come back from being down in both sets but Hana eventually came through the match 6-4, 6-4. It was looking as though Katie was going to level the second set after fighting back from 5-2 down but Hana played a good service game to close out the match.
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Ben and I had lunch at 12pm and then the plan was to see how Ben felt with a racket in his hand to see whether we could train at 2pm but, as we expected, his arm was still very sore so we decided to hit the gym.
While I had a long run on the running machine, Ben completed 15 sets of interval sprints, did some lower body strength work and finished with a core and stretching session. When I was finished I joined Georgie Axon and Anastasia Mikheeva in the ice bath; the girls decided to go for 10 minutes straight while I decided to do some contrast bathing which involved 6 sets of 1 minute in the ice bath followed by 3 minutes in the warm swimming pool. I’m not sure whose was more difficult; the girls with the constant cold or me contracting the muscles and then getting pins and needles every time the fresh blood flowed back in once I entered the warm water!!
After showering and changing at the gym, we returned to the hotel and then headed next door to the supermarket to get some fruit and some chocolate milk to help our recovery. It was then back off to Beef Boys Grill at 6.15pm for a very nice lasagne dinner before relaxing at the hotel for the rest of the evening.
We’re going to see how Ben’s arm is in the morning before deciding whether he can train or whether he needs a complete rest day. If he rests we have the option of going to a local Lion Farm in the morning . . . but that is weather dependant!!
