Had a rather grueling double practice session today. Well, let me re-phrase. It was hard for me, at this moment. Maybe earlier in the summer it would have been a snap, but after hurting myself a bit in Colorado, bringing my bow weight down 2lbs, and laying off all week, it was pretty hard. (To give you perspective, most top Korean archers probably shoot 200-500 arrows a day without blinking. I shot 106, and counted myself lucky. It's not as bad as it sounds, though. My goal is usually quality instead of quantity. Each archer is different.)

I shot around 70 arrows this morning, and another 36 this afternoon. And since I overslept, it was all done in 97F heat with 80% humidity. Full sun, standing on asphalt. (Just keep telling yourself, I love Texas! I love Texas!) Strangely enough, even though it felt a little harder to draw back the bow, my back muscle didn't really begin to feel lots of pain until the last bit of practice. Of course, by then I was shaking a bit all over-- "feeling the burn" if you know what I mean. Naturally, my dad doesn't tell me till the end of practice that he'd cranked my bow weight back up about a pound this morning. I couldn't help but laugh. It probably saved me some mental hurdles to overcome, but I still would have liked to know! Sheesh. :)

Still, it was a great practice overall. In the morning we did some equipment tuning. This afternoon, Dad did some filming with a new high-def camera. Also, I got a chance to use the "Olympic Sounds Playlist" of crowd sounds and cheering that former Olympic Training Center Resident Athlete Guy Krueger made for me. He's the Assistant Coach out there now, and we all are so proud of him. Guy does so much for the sport of archery. His playlist worked wonderfully, too. He had it paced just like it was a real Olympic archery match, with George Tech announcing scores and opponents. Somehow, listening to the sounds, it was so much easier to picture myself in the same intimidatingly narrow stadium where our Olympians have been competing this week.

I am as disappointed as the next American archer to see that we have no shooters left in competition over there. Still, I think they all shot very well (did you see Butch Johnson's three-arrow shootoff?? I nearly died of suspense!) and I hope they can enjoy themselves a bit now that the hard part is over. Haha, I remember in 2004, the Canadian archer Jonathan O'Hayan told me that he was strangely glad when he went out so quickly in his matches. He had more time to spend seeing the Parthenon and shopping at the old Plaka market. I think that was where I got my idea of archery vacations. Whenever I don't come out of a match victorious, it's as if I switch gears mentally. I decide from that moment onward that I am "on vacation" and I do my best to make the rest of the trip a positive one by cheering for my teammates. Or, if none of my teammates are left competing, I might cheer for a Canadian. You know. If there was nothing else to do. ;)

And for those of you who have been glued to NBC just like me, following Michael Phelps and John Horton... Remember that anyone can be in the Olympics. Just keep dreaming! ^_^