Week Three

We have Sunday off here so the General Secretary took us karting at the local race track where he owns a couple 2 stroke karts that are extremely  fast. After testing out one of those 2 stroke engine karts I decided to stick to the go-karts that were more family friendly. We spent a couple hours in the evening there racing the kids and adults. It was definitely a great way to spend the day off here in Phnom Penh.

Third week here has been the toughest so far. After a nice Sunday break, Monday came along and kicked our ass. Our head coach got back Sunday night so Monday was a long day for training. The tennis part of training here is focused on directionals. Its hard to go into detail but it’s a high percentage, low risk game style that allows you to play more natural without thinking too much about the next shot. We have been given a book here to read called Coaching Tennis by Chuck Kriese, which explains it all. Very interesting read. We have been playing tennis our whole lives and still  are learning new things! We spent a lot of time conditioning this week in the gym and at the Olympic Stadium track. We ran a timed mile on Wednesday and sprinted four 400 meters. Pun ran a 5:46 mile and I ran a 6:50 mile, which is probably my best time! We won’t talk about how sprinting went. In the gym we do a little bit of weights, body weight work outs, and a lot of core.

Pun and I have been breaking strings here like crazy, so we have to take a tuk tuk to the racquet shop that takes about 20 minutes there and back. The other day we found an old drop weight stringer in the Federation office, took it back along with all the tools to our hotel room. Now we don’t have to make the long trips and deal with the crazy traffic here in the city! We are staying at the Cambodian Country Club (training site for The Tennis Federation of Cambodia). They have a equestrian training center, soccer field, weight room, badminton courts, basketball court,  and a swimming pool. In front of our hotel is the Equestrian Federation training center, so we see horses every morning. I like all sorts of animals so usually pet them before we eat breakfast. We see a lot of frogs and geckos here, especially at night when the bugs come out. If you don't keep your door shut here, critters will find there way into your rooms. I'm pretty sure we have two geckos living in our bathroom. Its a very interesting and different life over here!

We have not ventured out in the city lately because we've been busy with training, but we were told of this restaurant that serves really good Khmer food and they serve Cambodian athletes for free. The name of the restaurant is called Alibaba. I know the name doesn't sound Cambodian, but they serve really good Khmer food! Pun and I have been there a couple times when we have the energy to leave the Country Club. We went out with the team this week to a Thai restaurant behind our coach’s place, which also has really good food as well. It’s been nice to finally go out and enjoy local foods here without having stomach aches after. We found a shopping center downtown called Sorya, which has been a good hang out spot when we get days off. The prices here are affordable so we will definitely have to get another suitcase for the gifts we have bought people back home.

This next coming week should be interesting because we are going to Vietnam and try to get into qualifying for two Future tournaments in Ho Chi Minh City. Our chances of getting into qualifying rounds are pretty slim because we are high on the waiting list and we don’t have points, but we are hoping to get into at least one of them. It’ll be nice to get some match play in before heading to Doha. Going to Vietnam also means visiting the country my mother is from, pretty sweet! Pun bought a digital camera at the mall so we are able to load them faster onto the computer, so expect a lot of pictures for next week’s blog. Hope everyone is doing well back home!