Two matches, two wins!

I won both my MCTA matches last night!  Back-to-back at 6pm and 9pm.

Fran and I won on #1 doubles for my 6.5 combo team.  Nice to beat a 3.5/3.0 pair when we are both 3.0s.  Our opponents did not move as well on the court as we did, to cover holes and anticipate shots.  We won 6-2, 6-2.  Our team also won #3 doubles to win the match.

The second match was for my 3.5 team.  Anu and I won 6-2,  7-5.  Our opponents made quite a few unforced errors in the first set, but picked it up in the second set.  We were down 5-4 in the second set, but came back for the win.  Nice!  Anu has a really good forehand return, which was a definite asset.  Unfortunately, the team did not win any of the other courts.  The opposing team was very good.  When leaving the second match, I saw a very pretty full Moon in a COLD clear sky.

I now have 7 wins in a row in MCTA!  The streak feels good, but I wonder how long I can keep it up.  I'm optimistic about tonight's 3.0 match, as we are playing the team at the bottom of the rankings.  I got the book The Best Tennis of Your Life: 50 Mental Strategies for Fearless Performance for Christmas and read it in January.  I've been trying to focus on a couple things from the book that I think have been helping me.  First, as many of the strategies in the book emphasize, I'm trying to stay loose in my matches and not get too tense and worried about winning.  In my doubles matches, I've been trying to stay upbeat and joke with my partner.  In my singles matches, I've been trying to remember jokes or funny incidents to keep my mind of the match.  So far, that seems to be working.

The second thing from the book I've been doing is visualizing.  I don't think I'm really doing it like the book suggests, as the author wants you to take a moment before a serve or a point and visualize what you are going to do.  Instead, when I am playing and the ball is coming toward me, after I've made up my mind on the shot I try to very quickly visualize the shot.  For example, if I want to hit a strong cross-court forehand, I visualize that in about half a second.  I think that this is keeping me from overthinking the shot and just hitting it.  It's hard to keep remembering to do this, though.

After playing two matches and the tennis clinic in the morning, my BodyMedia said I burned a bit over 3000 calories for the day and took almost 25,000 steps.

This morning was my 11:30am boxing class as usual at Champion Boxing Fitness.  I was worried that I was going to be too worn out to really bring it, but I shouldn't have been.  Lately I've had enough energy for everything, even with doing 5 - 6 hours of tennis in a day.  I think this is partly because I've been trying to prioritize sleep a bit (not always successfully) and eating more than I was in Dec - Jan (except the holidays!).  I've been trying to eat 500 calories less than what I burned the day before, with some limits.  I don't go below 1600 cal/day or above 2000 cal/day, except for my cheat day on Saturday, when I eat about 2500 - 2600 cal.  This plan has led me to eating 1900-2000 calories four days a week, 1600 - 1700 two days, and my cheat day.  I've also been very slowly losing weight (hopefully in fat) over the past month.  Bonus!