Training Log Archive: Craig

Parent & child doubles. First round was against Liam's singles quarter final opponent and his dad so fairly even but we won comfortably 4-1 4-1 I think. Next round was against the 3rd seeds Deb & Emily Singleton. Deb is much better than me and Emily was top seed in the under 16 girls so I thought we would struggle to win a game. They won their first round 4-1 4-0 against Gunesh & Lavinia who I thought would be better than us so we celebrate a bit when I held serve to get on the board in the 3rd game. We went on to break back and win the first set in a tie breaker which maybe got Liam's hopes up a bit too much as he started getting upset with me after all my mistakes after that. They lifted their game to win the second set 4-0 and go up 2-0 in the third. We broke back and had our chances to level it but ended up going down 4-1. I think we probably pushed them a lot harder than they expected and they certainly seemed impressed with Liam's ability to hold his own considering he usually plays orange ball.

Event: Whiteman Park Village - NavDash
 

NavDash at Whiteman Park.
Made a mess of the middle part of the course and never felt good running.

Went for a bit of a run after work before picking Liam up from tennis. Wasn't feeling up to much so just jogged around the ovals, stretched a bit and did a little loop in KP with a few short hill sprints near the end.

Most of the Rosalie run. Struggled getting out of bed and needed a few stops to stretch on the walk over to the school so I was only at the corner of the school oval when the group came past.

Ran with Richard for the first few minutes discussing sleeping problems then a group of 4 girls broke clear on the run down to UWA. I surged up the little hill to bring the boys back up but stopped at the back of the group while Dan and Simon kept going and took Kate with them.

I then ran with Stewie for a while talking about my sore achilles and contemplating cutting the run short. We were approaching the split and I had just decided I would follow Nina when she stopped to tie her shoelaces so I had no choice but to keep going with Stewie on the longer loop.

We were now about 100m behind Kate, Dan and Simon so I tried to lift the pace a little to start clawing them back but they just seemed to keep edging away. When we got to the river Nic and James? had caught up and started discussing which of the 3 leaders was forcing the pace. Kate seemed to be on the front but I suspect Daniel was surging to encourage her.

I can never resist a challenge so by the time we crossed the road I was starting to pull away from the chase group a bit and once I started up the steps into KP it was on for real. Kate doesn't like to push the hills because of her heart issues so I caught her on the first climb but the boys were already well clear. I saw Simon on the next hill and he seemed to be struggling a little so I went hard to catch him on the climb but probably overcooked it a bit trying to get him before the top.

I was really suffering through the flattish section and needed to recover on the descent but I could see Daniel now and I knew he would go hard up the steep hill so I wanted to close up before the bottom. I was suffering enough to be doing deals with myself to take it easy from the top of the climb but I knew it was just mind games and when Daniel slowed at the top of the climb there was no way I was going to let the opportunity slip. Once you make the pass pride compels you to keep it going so I had to keep pushing all the way through to the war memorial.

As usual I told myself I would stay at the back of the group and jog it home and as usual I found myself surging up the hill after Hale oval to take the lead. When I got to the top I could hear heavy breathing coming up behind me and knew it had to be Daniel. Nobody else in the group is as stupidly competitive as us. I hadn't been going really hard so as he got close I tortured him by slowly increasing the pace to stay a couple of steps ahead until he finally cracked just before Saw Ave.

I took it easy for a while to let Daniel catch up but Nic came through just before the regroup and I went ahead again with him. He started asking about my recent 5k efforts and when I said I hadn't done one in a while he said he thought I could probably run about 17:30! I like to think I could go close to 18:30 on a good day but no way in the world would I be going under 18.

C • 17:30 3

Took Liam over to Maylands tennis club for a Tennis Australia 8 & under talent development camp. There was a talk for parents on flow state which I was quite looking forward to but I found it pretty disappointing. Seemed to be more about selling the benefits of it without much practical advice on learning to achieve it.

Pennants vs Bull Creek
Played crap. Lessons obviously a waste of time.
We still managed to win and remain top of the table somehow despite my best efforts to sabotage us.