A day off from work

Sometimes you just have to enjoy being a Public Servant and flexible working hours that allow us to be reimbursed OT with time off... (flex leave). With more than 20 hours owing, I asked for today off so I could watch the Hoppers District PS XC Champs. With the first race at 12:15pm, I started the day with an important sleep in...an appointment with some hot wax (years later and it still hurts...) and then a swim. I'm not 100% sure if swimming is in the program yet, but I only swam 750m (breast stroke & free style), so I'm sure I will survive.

I then sat in a coffee shop for 60 minutes reading the paper and drinking nice coffee before going to the XC course. I met the school group and then after a few minutes it felt like a normal XC race, lots of kids spotting me and parents too. So a few bits of advise to a few kids and jogging around with many kids, which gets strange looks from some teachers (who is this guy sort of looks...understandably). But by the end of the day I was approached by 2 other schools.

The only disappointing aspect of today is that Connor could have progressed to Zones today (top 6 go through), but at the school's race a feww weeks ago he had a 'brain snap' and decided he wouldn't race and stood on the start line for 10 minutes before he decided he would become normal again. One of his friends, Jarrad, who finishes within metre of him at Little Aths over 1500m finished 3rd today in the 2k race. :-(


Today's racing was great, Mia finished 2nd in the 10 year 2k race, but was 5th last at the 400m mark, happy to see a controlled start. Claire & Alysse were in the 12 year old race (Grade 6) and finished 1st and 3rd, with Kaitlyn (who I coached up to 1 month ago) in 2nd. A couple of younger kids who raced up ages (meaning they are 8 or 9) did really well with top 10 finishes but not good enough to progress, but they have another year or two in this age group, so they were great performances!

The St Peters kids did really well, in the big picture my four sessions with the kids wouldn't have helped a lot, excluding Claire (more than 12 months), but with 6 kids progressing through and three winners, Claire, Ben & Lexie (teachers daughter), the school were very happy with finishing 2nd out of 12 competing schools.
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Training tonight was at the track, with nearly all of my kids having raced in the past two days I thought I would give them a different session. One lap of the complex (900m) and one lap of the track, then some dynamic stretching and then some leg strengthening exercises, jumping, hopping, bounding and skipping. Then a few strides on the jav run up and onto the grass. Then for a change I set up a circuit, crunches, squats, push ups, lunges, burpees & planks with 20m runs in between each station, a lap of the circuit took approx 3 minutes. Finished off with some games.
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Like this evening I nearly forgot to mention my pilates, done & dusted. Its great for core, but a NEED more cardio...oh and to eat & drink less :-|