Takeru's first Kendo bout

Last Sunday Takeru attended his first Kendo meet for the 11 and below. Although he only advance one round, he showed composure and skills. He is starting to enjoy it. Here is a clip of him scoring a point from a hit on the "Men" (Japanese for face).

Photo from the meet

I didn't manage to take any photo..here is one with Ruri in the first couple of laps of the Freshmen and below open. She eventually lead a break, sat at second, and made her move at 2 to go to win.

My turn

I clocked 10'9 at todays practice. My last best time was 11'2 so I'm pretty happy about this. Ever since I heat molded my boot, I felt a lot more confident stepping into the corner. In fact I was gaining on my teammate who usually pulls away at the entrance. This explain the 0.3s improvement. In the back-to-back-to-back 5 lap, I was on the tail of my teammate for who usually get away from me starting from corner 1. This is achieved on my almost worn out wheels (in fact when I shaked my boot, it sounded something is loose). I need to play with the frame position a little more, and get a new set of wheels/bearing. I'll probably stay with the guys I'm trying to catch up for the past year:-) stay tuned.

10'5 and heat mold

After regionals, most skaters who are not going to nationals are not coming to practices any more, but it's actually a very good time to come even if you are not going to nationals. Someone told me, the couple of weeks up to Nationals can improve your time quite a bit compared with the regular season practice. In addition, everyone there is training very hard so it rubs off. Ruri did a 10'5 today, that is a very respectable time. Coach said she needs to go to nationals next year:-) we'll see. She also did a 300 in 32.8 (about 10'9). Now about head molding. I've been having foot pain since I got the "new" Bont Vapor boot, so yesterday I set up the oven (according to Bont FAQ) and see if I can do something. With a 160-180F temperature, it was totally useless to do anything to the boot, so I switch to my own way: I clamped the boot ankle area to make it narrow (I had too much wiggle room side ways) and used a hair dryer to heat the heel part of the carbon fiber. After about 15 minutes, I clamp it a bit more, then let it cool, and it worked. I went out for an outdoor session, I didn't have the pain in the ball of my foot any more! Today, I was so much better indoors too, I felt solid, and I was lower. By the way, I did Ruri's boot yesterday as well, she is still getting use to it, but the ankle support may have something to do with her 10'5. Next thing I'm planning to do is to get her on 4x100, I'm pretty sure that she can push it and it will force her to round her corners even more smoothly. That'll be next season.

Green sleeves to a grand

A better performance than what she did all week. I've noticed that Ruri can concentrate more during performance better than practice. This is similar for speed skating too. When everything is on the line, you can expect her to perform better. This is a very good quality.

Here is the uploaded Youtube clip.

Last meet of the season

This is a little late, I was waiting for the better photos taken by the pros and the coach, but seems neither had the time to get them online. But here is a quick report. Ruri skated both Novice and Standard, and with her recent spurt of improvement, she left her competition in the dust...the open was very entertaining. After the start, Ruri settled to second place after a few changes at the lead. I thought that was very clever. However, with 10 laps to go, she took the lead, and I thought that was a bit early. Later Ruri said that she hardly broke a sweat so she wanted to go faster. The two Juvenile girls (good ones though :-) went with her, but Ruri was doing most of the work up front. About 3 laps to go, coach asked one of the Juvenile girls to break away, Ruri carefully followed, and made a pass with one lap to go and hold on to win it. I was watching it like watching a soccer game:-) I don't think I have anything to tell her about skating. She is one her own now. Just a photo for record.