Sri Lanka U18 ITF Grade 5 (week 1), Day 6

Tuesday 7^th October 2014

Today was a bit of a non-event really as almost as soon as we arrived at the tennis club this morning the heavens opened and it poured down with rain for the whole day!

I was up early this morning and had a good run in the gym before I met the boys at 8am for breakfast. We had planned on leaving the hotel at 9am and even though it seemed like it was going to rain at any moment we called the referee and to our surprise he said that the singles matches were on court so we made our way over to the club. As soon as we arrived Toby and Nils started there warm-ups but within 5 minutes the rain started! It only lasted a few minutes so the boys got back out to warm up and complete their daily sprints before we went down to the back clay courts to hit. Toby and Nils were both hitting very well from the back of the court but just as we were about to go into some cross court hitting the rain came down . . . and didn’t stop!

Check out this video on the Facebook page: www.facebook.com/itctennis1

We stayed at the club to have some lunch and were hoping that the rain would ease so that we could get a Tuk Tuk back to the hotel without getting soaked . . . but it only got harder!

Eventually we got back to the hotel and relaxed for half an hour while we watched the end of The Inbetweeners movie (which Nils loved!) before the boys got stuck into their school work from 1-3pm.

It was then time to hit the gym and all three of us went through our own training programmes for around an hour and a half. It was great to see Toby and Nils getting on with their programmes in a very professional way without having to rely on a coach to guide them through it.

After the gym session we went back to the apartment, showered and changed and then headed out early to try and find somewhere to get some DVDs before we went to dinner. Last year I visited a video shop and ended up buying 6 of the latest DVDs for around £5 but I couldn’t remember the name of the shopping centre – all I knew was that it was either Liberty Plaza or Majestic City! We tried Liberty Plaza first but typically it was the wrong one and after driving around in the rain for 30 minutes we got to Majestic City and picked up 10 DVDs for £7!

From there we headed straight to the other Hilton for dinner and then it was back to the apartment to watch the first half of ‘Non-stop’ before the boys turned in for an early night.

Schedule for tomorrow (weather dependant!):

(1) Indra Patwardhan (IND) & Arjun Ramakrishnan (IND) vs (WC) Toby Huffer (GBR) & Nils Larsson Regnstrom (SWE) – 5^th match after 12pm (not before 4.45pm)