Sunday, January 29, 2012

The weekend

So my top level 10 has a pretty tough bar routine and has been struggling with it. It is very frustrating for her, she is very driven and does not do well with anything less than perfect. The routine is much harder than it needs to be per the rules of USA gymnastics. That doesn't mean she doesn't need to do a routine so hard, just means she goes above and beyond, and to be a top athlete you have to.

So not only is her routine really hard, and she is struggling with it, but we have told her that she has to compete it at a very important meet for the team. It is called Super Team and is hosted by World Class gymnastics just over the river in Illinois. We were going to use another athlete but that athlete injured herself a couple weeks ago and is now out for the rest of the season. Now it is on our level 10 who will also have to compete most if not all the other events at this meet as well, which means she may have to do two full meets in two days. It is not an enviable task, but is an honor to compete.

Our athlete on Saturday was having a bad day, and seemed to be letting it be known how she did not want the honor of representing our team on all the events, especially on bars, since she had a high chance of missing that routine. Her and I got into it, or I should say I got angry with her and let her know what I thought about how she was acting. Now all stories have two sides to them and I don't know what she would say about the event, but I felt like she was not acting like the leader she was, and was giving the other team members reason to also not want to compete for the team at Super Team.

To me it looked like I pissed off my athlete for saying what I said. She did not talk to me but she did not get back on the event for a few min, and it looked like she might have had some tears in her eyes. This is not what I was going for, but sometimes every athlete might need a little kick in the ass. And it seamed like that maybe for this kid this was the time. We went to our next event, which was vault, and I, still angry from bars, told the athlete she was going to do her new vault onto harder mats that usual, as well as higher. I didn't care how she felt about it, she was going to do it.

This is how that went.

This was the best she had ever done this vault, and just in time it seams because she has planned to do it in three weeks at the Gym Quarters invite. I felt bad for getting on this kid because she is a great kid. She works so hard, and never complains. But like I said maybe there was a silver lining.

After gym I left right away from Columbia IL about 30 min away. I had scheduled at power test and I like to do them down there since there is almost no traffic, no stop signs, or lights. The test is taken from Training and Racing with Power, and consists of a 5 min interval, 2 x 1 min intervals, 3 x 20 sec intervals, and a 20 min interval. All of these are ALL OUT, get the highest power numbers you can. My first interval did not go as good as I thought it should have so I changed the screens on my Garmin 500 so I could only see the time I had left on each intervals and just hammered. It turned out very good once I got home and looked at all the numbers. I am much higher than I was last year and feeling good that all the work that I have been doing is working out.

After that I raced home to have dinner with my wife and her parents for her birthday. We went to a great place called Jimmy's on the Park in Clayton. Wow, it was awesome! Katie found it and Clayton was having this thing called Clayton restaurant week where you got a 3 course meal for like $25. The food was unbelievable at this price! If you want to go just make sure you make a reservation because it was packed. Then this morning we woke up and ran over to Half & Half, also in Clayton. Katie and I love this place, but we hadn't always. The first few times we went it took way too long and the service was terrible. They seem to have their shit together though and everything on the menu is must have.

After breakfast I had to go and meet some teammates and other guys for a looong ride in the O'Fallon MO area. This is a ride I have done a few times and I have never done it well. There are huge climbs and I am more of a rock than a mountain goat. Once again I was the worst climber of the group and spent a lot of my time chasing the group down. The ride was 5+ hours, 88 miles, and over 10,000 feet of climbing. This time though I made it over 60 miles before I started to bonk, last time I only made it 40. So again at 60 miles I started stuffing my mouth with food. I was able to get out of the bonk, but I really have to work on it not happening in the first place. I can really see what I have to do though to ride with these guys. This is their back yard and they know every hill and turn. The only way I am going to start to be able to ride with these guys is to keep going. One of these times I will hang the whole way. It might be a long time in the future, but you need to have goals right?

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