the build up to nationals...
was just thinking about random stuff as i filled in the competitors name for nationals. This is it, the Raffles Junior College A Division (Girls) Team of 2007.
Went to Macritchie bright and early, ran monkey hill, felt good (: Someone was there shouting "Wow, hard core! hard core!" Perhaps most people would pause for a second look, but it only spurred me to go faster. Because I have this theory that if you're really hard core, people don't have anything to say... their jaws just drop (:
Was very lucky, somehow the national team was doing time trials so all schools couldn't go into the water till 10. Watched this super pro national team person clocked 2.04 for her 500m, then the national team k4 (which looks like 2 pairs of twins). Super cool (:
I have deep respect for Jiaolian.
Heard of this new tactic for the back 3 of a k4 to close their eyes and 'feel' the boat during training.
yesterday i did more pullups than i've done for probably the last 3 weeks! haha, partly cos i hardly did during the last 3 weeks, spending more time on weights and running, and partly cos yesterday went into overdrive
yea... before i get back to work:
But if there is something of Ben Johnson in every great champion, in terms of the readiness to go the full route, then there is rather more of Steve Redgrave. I was there for the final race: the one in Sydney when he and the coxless four won the gold medal, and Redgrave collected his fifth gold at his fifth Olympics Games. I remember the dreadful shaft of pain I felt when I was convinced that the Italians had beaten them to the line, the incomprehension I felt at the eruption of British cheers, and the extraordinary joy when I realise my error.
...the tale of the fifth gold medal, the final perfect chapter in that 16-year-long quest of perfection.
... it was an epic, I wrote, it was the fifth book of the Redgraviad, and it was an extraordinary privilege to be allowed to write it. It was not the greatest piece of sport I had ever seen. It was the greatest piece of sport that anybody had seen.
Greatness, then, requires an aspect of longevity. It is not about one perfect performance or one perfect tournament, a single masterpiece. No: it is about the accumulation of an oeuvre. A life. A CV. A biography. An epic, yes, I like that term very much.
Redgrave is not only a person. Redgrave is also a quality. You look for someone who might achieve great things in sport. Napoleon would ask of his generals:
Has he luck?’ I ask of athletes: ’has he Redgrave?’ Redgrave is the ability to go beyond yourself. It is the ability to go the full distance, Johnson-like, and more. It is the ability to commit, day after day, to the one goal of winning. It is the ability to achieve the ultimate goal: and to be unsatisfied. To want more. To demand more, to seek more, and to get more.
Redgrave constantly sought security, and he found it in the knowledge that he had done more than anyone else who opposed him. He had rowed more miles, lifted more weights, erged more ergos. He had suffered more. He had cared more. He had overcome more setbacks. When Redgrave went into battle, he knew that all the others had had the choice to work just as hard as he had done, and that they had chosen not to do so. From this comes the tiniest scruple of contempt. These people had stinted themselves in their desire to be the best. Redgrave knew he had not done so. And so, as he approached the final stages in 1996 with everything as it should be, his constantly repeated instruction to Matthew Pinsent was:’let’s not f it up.’
