Feb
2020

Countdown to Comp!

We’re getting ready for the first gymnastics competition this season!

He said

After the hullaballoo of last birthday weekend – and the prep that went into it – this week was obviously a lot more low-key. Emelia was right back into her full slate of regular activities plus school: Monday dance; Tuesday, Wednesday & Sunday gymnastics; as-well-as school and the accompanying homework. Monday I was down to Waterloo to support our Conestoga store during the day, but was back in time to catch a sliver of Emelia’s ballet class which I haven’t been able to in some time. The program they are preparing for the end of year show looks pretty cool and I really like the music they chose.

The big event this week that I was excited about was we reserved our first camping trip of the season for this year. Even though vacation requests have yet to be 100% firmed up for the summer at work, we had to reserve our first week away as the second the reservations open six months in advance, at 7am, the sites are immediately scooped up. Last year we lost out on getting Bon Echo and that was a major disappointment to our summer. As much as Presqu’ille is nice and we were with friends, I definitely felt the absence of our favourite park in Ontario. We happily got our week at Arrowhead booked – albeit needing us to spend the first 3 days on one site and then move over to our favourite for rest of the week. Now, we just have to hope the vacation request gets approved and then it’s official!

On the fitness front I officially landed at down 15 pounds since we got the rower. With the exception of when the entire house was stricken with the gastrointestinal bug early in January, I have done 30 minutes on the rower every single day with the exception of days that I play hockey on. Since Halloween last year I have rowed 337 kms and 32 hours! And tonight, before dinner and the blog, I finished a personal best of 5.95 km. I am so close to crossing 6 km in 30 minutes that I hope it comes soon! When I started this I managed 4.3 km in 30 minutes so I feel really great about where I am now. And I feel really great! Which was the point in the beginning for all of this anyway.

Tomorrow, I am off for a really special event. Unfortunately with the daycare, Danielle isn’t able to join me. And, Emelia made the decision – even though we offered to let her miss school to come – opted not to as she doesn’t want to fall behind with two more days of strike this week. I was actually quite proud of her for making that level-headed decision. So tomorrow, after Emelia’s ortho appt and she’s back at school I am headed to special TV / Radio taping of Sarah Harmer who will be performing material from her forthcoming album. I am so excited to see this as it will be much more intimate than show we have tickets for in April here in London.

So with camping, good health and concerts all on our immediate radar, it has been a really great week. Add in that Wiarton Willie didn’t see his shadow this morning predicting an early Spring and things just got a lot better!

She said

In the whole scheme of things this week was pretty low key. We had our normal week night dance/gymnastics for Emelia but with Emelia healthy she was able to get the most out of her training this week. We have talked a fair bit recently about how Emelia has been struggling this year, she has been battling injuries and this has made gymnastics a real challenge. She has been working through pain and with the support of her coaches and physiotherapists she has been able to adapt her training and get the most out of her sessions. Mentally this has been hard on her, she has trained for years to reach this goal and dealing with pain has made getting certain skills clean really hard. Emelia hasn’t always loved going to training for obvious reasons. Now that she is getting a bit better and the training and excerises have given her an ability to train to finish this season strong.

Emelia’s first competition in is just over a month and her focus is back to training and wanting to get the best possible scores she can on each apparatus. She is happy with her beam and floor routines the most and is pretty happy with how vault is looking. Her biggest hurdle especially with her nerve pain in her back is bars. She is struggling, skills she once had clean are painful so she isn’t happy about how they are looking. Emelia is harder on herself than any coach or judge could be and it does get in her head when things are going the way she wants. She had a good practice today, got a lot of compliments from her teammates and coach so she was feeling pretty good tonight about everything. It is hard to believe this is her last year of gymnastics, she has grown in so many ways because of this sport and hope that the skills she has gained will take her in her life – not the physical ones but the mental ones.

This week we had a bit of snow and it felt like the perfect week to book our first week long camping trip. We love having the first week of the summer after school lets out as our first week. Mentally school takes a lot out of Emelia and us to be honest so having the first week of the summer as a low key family focused week is just about perfect. Add in that we are back toArrowheadin the Muskokas makes things even that much more perfect. We love that park, love the lake, the size of the sites, the entire area and most importantly we love that we get to be close to my sister and her family for a week and hope that we can get in as much family time as possible.

It might be a bit too early but we are close to a countdown to summer and camping season!

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