My Weekend

Travelling in a car often gives me a headache. Travelling to Geelong was no problem, I watched a movie and once it was over I had arrived.
We spend a few hours in the Westfield shopping centre shopping for clothes, books and other things. My sister bought more stuff for her deb such as her deb partners present, strapless bras for her dress and mum bought her a nice necklace and earrings to wear on the night.  I bought a Miranda Kerr book and I also bought a new dress, a pair of pants and 3 tops and stationary and decoration from my room from Typo. There was a lot of sales in the shopping centre. I had pumpkin and beetroot salad for lunch.

We stayed in a small town outside of Geelong called Portarlington. We went to the pub for dinner. I had salt and pepper squid and it was beautiful. The service at the pub was really good and I really enjoyed my meal.

Waking up at 6am on a Sunday isn't always fun on a Sunday morning. We all got up had showers, breakfast, put on our leotards, braided our hair, added some hairspray and got ready for a big day. Bella is 18 and also on her P's so she drove herself and Bec back into Geelong to pick up our coach and drive out to Grovedale to the competition. Their session started at 8am!

Mum and I drove to Grovedale and arrived at 8:30 and arrived as the girls had almost finished warming up. The girls are competing level 10 which is the hardest level in the state. A lot of the girls who train in city gyms tend to train more hours and have various coaches, including retired national level gymnasts as coaches which would be an advantage. They are all very good at gymnastics and I personally love watching level 10 as a level 8. It gives you inspiration and ideas.

This competition in Geelong is a Judges Invitational, where the judges don't just score routines but also right down what you did right and wrong; like a report card and you take it back to training and improve the things you need to making better routines and success. I find it very helpful to get another point of view, other than what my coach has told me. It's good for blind spots for the things you are not aware of, for example if you have a habit of bending your legs, or not getting enough height in your tumbles on floor, or having flexed toes on bars or even piking your vaults. They right down what they would like to see you improve next time you compete. This is the only competition that does this and only happens once a year.

Also a helpful thing our gym has recently gotten is an iPad which has an app on it called Coaches Eye. What happens is our coach or another gymnast/person videos a routine on the app and you can go back with your coach and watch it, in normal speed or slow motion, you can even pause it. It gives you feedback and you are able to see what you are doing right and wrong. I find it helpful for knowing where I go wrong on bars, how much I do good or bad and what I need to focus on and improvement.

Our level 10's did well and Bella placed 6th on floor. After their session we went to a shopping centre and got Nando's for lunch. I had a classic pita which was mild, and it was delicious.

Mum had to take Bec home for deb practice so I had to compete without them watching. I had an alright day, my floor routine was the best I did all day, usually beam is my best but I fell off. A girl dislocated her knee on floor so there was a little bit of waiting around, and after the ambulance wheeled her out in a bed everyone clapped for appreciation and respect. The girl was very brave and you wouldn't have known there was anything happening unless you looked over on the floor and saw what was going on; she didn't scream like when a girl dislocated her elbow at our gym during training which was frightening, so I think she went well.

Bella drove me back to Ararat. I had vanilla slice on the way back, we both sang and talked and had a bit of fun. I saw what I thought was a dog and said aloud "wow, that's a big dog!" Sadly it ended up a goat. Bella struggled to laugh because she was losing her voice due to having a cold. It was a nice trip home.

Mum met us at McDonald's in Ararat with Bec and we had Macca's for dinner.