C37— Resolving The Knot

   “Ohhhh! I’ve got the results sheet for the third group of the preliminaries! Let’s see the final results of this group of contestants!”

    Ippei Ishida enthusiastically began to announce the players’ results, and when he reported Su Zhe’s name, his voice was filled with admiration.

    “And finally, Su Zhe from China! Our beautiful and powerful snow leopard boy! What is his final time? Oh ~10 seconds 16! Very beautiful number, easily entering 10 seconds and 20 minutes in the preliminaries, I’m really looking forward to his next performance! “

    On the commentary stage, Ishida Ippei was still singing his praise, while Su Zhe, who was by the track, couldn’t help but frown after learning his result from the staff.

    10 seconds 16 …… even worse than his performance in the preliminaries of the National Championships …… At that time his sprint skill was still in LV2, but he already ran in 10 seconds 15, now he was in the sprint skill LV3 status and he even had a bonus, yet his speed was still only 10 seconds 16, the gap was enough to highlight the problem.

    He didn’t feel any discomfort, but it was just difficult to enter his best competitive state. If it wasn’t for the sudden acceleration of the Indonesian runner in the sprint stage, which gave him a sense of crisis and thus tensed up his spirit, perhaps his performance would have been even worse.

    Thinking about these problems, Su Zhe left the field in a state of disbelief and retired to the rest area specially prepared for the athletes, waiting for the rest of the Chinese team to finish the race.

    Ye Jun finished the 110m hurdles preliminaries and came to the rest area, when he saw Su Zhe who was in a daze, he walked over to Su Zhe and greeted him.

    “Ah Zhe, what’s wrong? You look distracted, you didn’t run well in the preliminaries?”

    Su Zhe smiled bitterly and nodded, “Yes, my state isn’t good, only 10 seconds 16 ……”

    Hearing Su Zhe’s answer, Ye Jun raised his eyebrows and patted his shoulder, “Wait …… Ah Zhe, kid …… you mean 10 seconds 16 isn’t good?”

    After a pause, Ye Jun helplessly added: “Do you know how many domestic 100-meter runners have run into 10 seconds 20 this year? Counting the emergence of you, and the injured Chen Zhi, the remaining are only Wang Qin, Qiu Xinchu, Zhao Zhixuan and Meng Hao, 4 people! Among them, Wang Qin, Qiu Xinchu and Meng Hao’s 3 personal PB hasn’t exceeded 10 seconds 16.”

    Ye Jun’s words made Su Zhe freeze, he was completely immersed in his poor athletic state, his already anxious and paranoid thinking was suddenly interrupted and he began to gradually return to normal thoughts.

    He roughly understood the meaning of Ye Jun’s words, this was already a very excellent performance, he didn’t need to be chagrined by this achievement.

   But, Su Zhe was silent for a moment before he hesitantly spoke, “But …… what if I just compare it to my past state?”

    “Compared with your own state?” Ye Jun saw the hesitation in Su Zhe’s eyes and remained firm: “Is there a gap of more than 0.20 seconds between you and your best time? Your PB is 10 seconds 12, even if you can run into 10 seconds 10 in training, the performance float of less than 0.1 seconds is completely within the normal performance float range.”

    “Ah Zhe, you have to know that we are human, and not robots, everything can’t go according to your plans.” Ye Jun said with a serious expression: “You need to clearly understand that your previous idea is very wrong. An athlete’s state ups and downs isn’t terrible, what is terrible is that you can’t accept your state’s ups and downs psychologically.”

    “When you encounter a fluctuation, find the cause and solve it. Only when you successfully overcome your psychological problems, can you grow into a qualified athlete.”

    Ye Jun’s words made Su Zhe freeze in place, and only after a long time did he reveal a bitter smile – his words completely woke him up, and he finally understood where the knot in his heart was.

    Since the appearance of the system, although he had sensibly told himself not to rely too much on the system, he subconsciously thought that with the help of the status buff, his performance should always be in the best condition …… he was treating himself as a running machine that couldn’t fail.

    How did he forget that before the appearance of the system, even if he was constantly working hard every day on various dance training, when it was time to perform, it was difficult to ensure that his stage performance state would be 100% presented?

    Ye Jun was right, since he was human, there would be state ups and downs, but with his strength, it was enough to ensure that even if he was in a low state, the results could still be stable at a height that was difficult for many people to reach, and even, in the competition, he still had the system’s buffs, so his performance would never reach its worst state.

    What he wanted to do was to really only use the system as a tool to improve his strength, not to make himself dependent on it.

    After thinking about this, Su Zhe suddenly felt a burst of relief in his heart, and the slightly tense mood he had during this period of time dispersed.

    There was no mistake, if his state wasn’t good enough, then he needed to find the reason and try to improve his competitive state!

   Watching as Su Zhe’s expression relaxed, Ye Jun smiled: “What? Finally figured it out?”

    Su Zhe smiled in response, “Yes! Thank you Brother Ye, I feel much more relaxed now!”

   Ye Jun nodded in satisfaction, “That’s good, you are one of the most talented athletes I’ve ever seen, and you have Coach Su on the side to help you. I think even if I didn’t tell you this, Coach Su should be able to gradually help you solve your psychological problems.”

  As they talked, Su Zhe suddenly heard his phone ring from his sport bag, he took out the phone to see, the caller was his father Su Yinsheng.

    Su Yinsheng’s words were brief, just telling Su Zhe that he had sent a copy of the latest training plan to his WeChat and asked him to complete the corresponding training one hour before the afternoon semi-finals.

    Obviously, his father was also following his game and saw his current problems through his game results and status. Only he didn’t explain the reason directly, but chose another way to relieve him – too slow to enter the competition? Then let yourself warm up before the game! Even if he had to sacrifice a little bit of physical fitness before the game.

    Just as Su Zhe untied his knot and returned to the hotel in a relaxed state with his father’s training schedule, posts from the japanese girls who had watched today’s game appeared sporadically on the Japanese Twitter feed.

    [You won’t believe it, I saw an angel at the Asian Championship Invitational today! Men’s 100m sprinter Su Zhe from China …… He must be the most perfect prince ever! Everyone in the room was submissive to his beauty, Mr. Ishida called him the beautiful Snow Leopard boy …… I think His Royal Highness the Prince from the Chinese Empire fits his image better! (The attached picture is a screenshot related to Su Zhe from the live broadcast and a postcard)]

    [I saw Player Su too! He’s really super perfect! He has great strength and perfect appearance. …… Please make sure you watch the replay of the Fuji Channel webcast! You’ll be able to feel his charm!]

    [Please make sure to watch Su’s match! I’ll be there in the afternoon to support him too!]

    At the same time, the “philosopher” girls who had watched the morning game had left for a while and were gathering for lunch and waiting for the afternoon semi-finals to begin.

    A few of the girls opened Twitter and Weibo, they wanted to post some messages related to Su Zhe, but someone first saw the content posted by the japanese girls who had exchanged Twitter accounts with them.

    “Uh …… this.” The girl whose nickname was ‘I’m chasing cub in Japan’ looked at her companion with a sullen expression: “What should I do? It feels like I’m losing ……”

    Although they had been in Japan for a short time, and generally understood the exaggerated language style of the Japanese girls, even the sports commentator uncle could also spit out extreme compliments, several “philosophers” had begun to reflect on themselves- this was really too bad, their boast of the cub actually couldn’t even be compared to foreign people who just became fans!

    This wasn’t good!

    “Let’s go and apply for authorization! Let’s go translate their tweets and retweet them back to Weibo, so that we can all learn the essence of complimenting! Let’s try to make such professional compliments in the future!”

    Holding a mentality that loyal fans couldn’t lose, a few young girls quickly translated the tweets and the commentary of Commentator Ishida’s bragging series into Chinese in a single stream and posted them in Su Zhe’s fan page, and then, not surprisingly, it received a large number of hahaha and admiration for their skillful words.

    On the track and field kingdom’s forum, many track and field fans were discussing Su Zhe’s status in the morning preliminaries. Everyone was an old track and field fan for many years, so naturally they could see Su Zhe’s poor athletic state.

    His state was obviously not quite right, when Su Zhe was in good shape before, his reaction should be within 0.15.

 [The gu*n response is 0.18, which is obviously not quite right. When Boss Zhe was in good condition before, the g*un response should be within 0.15. 】

    [To be honest, 10 seconds 16 in the preliminary round is very good. But obviously you can see that Boss Zhe’s starting wasn’t smooth, it took time for him to enter the right state, in the live screen, in the rush at the end, Boss Zhe was still charging forward, apparently he really got into the right stage during the sprint stage …… I hope he’ll be better.]

    [The previous poll post was right …… Boss Zhe had been in top form before, he mustn’t fall into a slump at such a critical moment ……]

    When everyone was discussing and worrying about Su Zhe’s status, someone transferred the series of tweets translated by the “philosopher” girls to the Athletic Kingdom’s forum, and immediately, the originally slightly tense atmosphere turned into a burst of hahaha.

    Someone quickly raised a soulful question under the post.

    [Hahahahahahaha, you guys say, does boss Zhe know about these enthusiastic compliments?]

    [Wondering about this +1, the Japanese praises are so wonderful, I’d like to see how Boss Zhe himself reacts when he receives them ……]

    [Hahahaha, the big brother upstairs, I advise you to be kind.]

    In this joyful atmosphere, the time soon entered the afternoon session.

    Su – completely unaware of the compliments he was receiving – Zhe, after completing the training program given by his father, followed the Chinese team and once again entered the stadium.

    Before the game was about to start, Su Zhe was slightly tired, but the happy feeling of being completely settled mentally and the eagerness to try from the bottom of his heart made him look forward to the next game!

    Beside him, Ye Jun obviously sensed his mood and looked at him with a smile, “How’s it? Are you in good shape?”

    Su Zhe smiled and nodded: “Yes, I can’t wait!”

    After saying this, Su Zhe waved his hand to Ye Jun, and then followed the staff towards the preparation area for the 100m semi-final.

    Soon, a new battle would be fought!