I Wasn't Born a Champion - Chapter 13

Not far away, Zhou Yuang and Jiang Yuan saw Su Yu being blocked. The two of them were just about to quicken their pace to head over to Su Yu’s side, but before they could even get close, they noticed that the young athlete who had blocked Su Yu had already changed his expression.

They saw Su Yu knitting his brows, his beautiful little face completely filled with an annoyed expression.

The morning training session had only just ended, and that feeling of being seen through by Pei Dingshan was still lingering in his heart. Add to that the sticky, greasy feeling on his body that made him irritable and want to quickly go back and wash up, plus all the irritation from being provoked by Zhou Yuang earlier, his expression when looking at the young athlete opposite him naturally appeared even more impatient.

He looked straight at the young athlete in front of him and asked coldly: “Yeah, on what grounds does Pei Dingshan fancy someone with such a weak body like me? Then, since even someone like me can be favored by Pei Dingshan, yet he specifically didn’t want to choose you—isn’t it already glaringly obvious who should quit?”

“If I, who was favored by Pei Dingshan, should be sensible enough to take the initiative to quit, then shouldn’t you, who isn’t even noticed by Pei Dingshan at all, be sensible enough to take the initiative to quit the provincial team’s youth group?”

The young athlete in front of him had been arrogant and put on airs just a few seconds ago, but in the next second, he was left speechless by the counterattack of the weak and sickly youth in front of him.

“You…!”

Su Yu looked at him with impatience: “What about me.”

“You are shameless!”

Su Yu really didn’t want to have a primary school chicken argument with this person anymore, so without turning his head, he bypassed the guy and continued walking in the direction of the dormitory.

That young athlete obviously wanted to say something more, but before leaving, Su Yu knitted his brows and gave him a look: “If you want to enter training under Pei Dingshan, the person you should look for is him, not me.”

After saying that, he was too lazy to look back ever again.

This young athlete froze for a moment and was just about to chase forward when he found that both his left and right shoulders were pressed down by someone. Looking back, on the left was Zhou Yuang and on the right was Jiang Yuan.

He saw these two malevolent deities, one on the left and one on the right, looking at him with ‘harmonious’ and kind smiles.

Jiang Yuan: “Xiao Yu is very tired from training and needs to rest.”

Zhou Yuang: “Friend, is our Little Ancestor someone you can just casually strike up a conversation with?”

The young athlete: …To hell with you, who the fuck wants to strike up a conversation with him?!

Seeing that the young athlete still seemed defiant, Jiang Yuan, with a gentle and approachable smile, unleashed a continuous stream of toxic remarks.

“Has Coach Pei ever favored you?”

“Is Coach Pei willing to accept you?”

“Before Xiao Yu and Ang-zi came to the provincial team, when he screened the provincial team’s athletes, did you pass the selection?”

“If none of the above are true, on what grounds do you think that after Xiao Yu quits, Coach Pei might settle for the next best thing and fancy you?”

“Friend, in everything, it’s not about whether you want it or not. First think about whether you are worthy.”

After this string of toxic remarks attacked him, not only was Zhou Yuang dumbfounded, but the young athlete who had come to block Su Yu turned completely pale on the spot.

“You, you guys!”

This young athlete was first left pale and speechless from Su Yu’s sharp retort, and immediately following that, he was subjected to a barrage of toxic remarks from Jiang Yuan. At this moment, he stammered “You, you…” for a long time but couldn’t manage a follow-up, and finally fled in a wretched state.

It wasn’t until this young athlete had fled that Zhou Yuang, with a dumbfounded expression, started applauding: “Holy cow, Yuan-zi! Just now I thought our Little Ancestor’s reply was already very fierce, I didn’t expect that there is always a stronger master out there!”

Jiang Yuan didn’t bother to pay attention to him, waved his hand, and took a step ahead to chase after Su Yu’s direction, leaving only Zhou Yuang behind to walk slowly while scratching his head.

“Too tragic, whoever that was. Out of all the people to provoke, why did he have to provoke this toxic-tongued brother duo?”

“Eh, that’s right, who exactly was that guy who came to look for trouble just now?”

It was only until this moment that Zhou Yuang suddenly came to a realization—good heavens, this guy who came to look for trouble couldn’t even leave his own name before being driven away by the toxic-tongued brothers. He really is a tragically miserable cannon fodder, not even worthy of possessing a name.

Whether it was because of Cannon Fodder-kun’s publicity or not, when Su Yu, Jiang Yuan, and the others arrived at the training ground again in the afternoon, there were many more cautious and observing gazes around them.

Zhou Yuang observed these gazes and quietly said to Su Yu and Jiang Yuan: “Yuan-zi, look, you and our Little Ancestor are considered ‘notorious’ this time.”

Jiang Yuan didn’t really care about these things. To him, the matter of ‘becoming a provincial team athlete’ had originally never appeared on his life planning route. Even if he was now accidentally chosen by Liu Wenjian and started training together with the athletes of the youth group, the truth was that he temporarily still didn’t have any real sense of reality about all of this.

These youth team athletes were no different from the other campers of the summer camp to Jiang Yuan. After this summer camp cycle passed, it would be a case of nobody knowing anybody.

Furthermore, he looked at Zhou Yuang: “Didn’t you say it yourself, Ang-zi? Competitive sports only look at strength. As long as your strength is powerful enough, we can walk sideways.”

Zhou Yuang froze for a moment, watching Jiang Yuan, who usually took care of Su Yu like an old mother, say these words, and then suddenly burst out laughing: “Good heavens, Yuan-zi, I suddenly feel right now that you also have a personality that is very suitable for doing competitive sports.”

He patted Jiang Yuan’s shoulder, and under Su Yu’s glare, he withdrew his paw that he had intended to also put on him.

“Hehe, Yuan-zi is right. As long as our strength is powerful enough, we can walk sideways.”

“No need to care about those guys who are sour and cowardly. Let’s go, let’s go, the coach is waiting for us to train!”

From this afternoon onwards, the formal training for Su Yu and Zhou Yuang began.

After Zhou Yuang was woken up by Su Yu’s words, he made up his mind to only listen to Pei Dingshan’s guidance. While being obedient, he also began to chase after Pei Dingshan to ask about various training principles that he himself did not understand.

Although Pei Dingshan looked cold and unsympathetic as a person, facing Zhou Yuang’s questions, he wouldn’t perfunctorily dismiss him either.

Just like the words he had previously said to Zhou Yuang—”Finally grew a mouth? If you don’t understand, ask. If you don’t ask, don’t expect others to always be able to read your mind.”

Of course, according to Zhou Yuang’s later observations, this sentence of his coach was probably only directed at himself.

After all, their Little Ancestor wasn’t very willing to grow a mouth either. When he had a doubt, at the beginning he would still knit his brows and think for a long while. Probably because the aura between the Little Ancestor and Pei Dingshan had always been somewhat incompatible, so every time the Little Ancestor would first bury his head in thoughts for a while before lifting his head to look at the coach and ask him ‘why’.

Later on, as long as their Little Ancestor’s brows knitted for a little while, their Coach Pei would proactively open his mouth first to ask him what was wrong.

After Zhou Yuang had observed this several times, he couldn’t help but fall into a bizarre silence.

As expected, between him and the Little Ancestor, only he was the buy one get one free attached gift, right?

During this period of time, whether for Su Yu or for Zhou Yuang, it was absolutely not an easy training process.

For Su Yu, although the training volume this time was much lighter than the training volume in his memory during the summer camp stage, this lightness did not mean that the training was easy, but rather that it was light on his physical load and injury potential.

Except for the lighter intensity of the physical load, Pei Dingshan did not discount the parts that he should practice at all. He would only stand on the side expressionlessly pointing out every single mistake in his movements and the errors he repeatedly made.

In fact, Su Yu’s memory was already very good. For the training requirements given to him by Pei Dingshan, he could basically complete them accurately and in place. But after all, he didn’t have enough training experience, and his body had not yet formed stable muscle memory for everything about sprinting. Even under circumstances where he had already paid attention, it was still unavoidable that some incorrect areas would appear.

“The fourth time.”

When Su Yu stood up from the starting blocks once again, he heard Pei Dingshan coldly spit out these three words from the side.

Su Yu: “…”

After Su Yu with difficulty smoothed out his breathing, he muffledly responded with an “en.”

This was the rule set between Pei Dingshan and Su Yu. When Su Yu made obvious mistakes 5 times in his daily training, that evening Pei Dingshan would give him an individual theoretical lesson as a punishment.

The reason why this kind of punishment was set was purely because Su Yu’s physical condition was not suitable for using extra physical training as a punishment. Pei Dingshan had also discovered that Su Yu seemed to have an exceptional resistance emotion toward him, so he changed the punishment targeted at Su Yu to adding a 1v1 theoretical lesson in the evening.

Coincidentally, Pei Dingshan never believed that as an athlete, one didn’t need to know theory—some coaches believed that practice makes perfect, but he didn’t think so.

Athletes are actually the people who are most familiar with their own bodies. In the early stages when an athlete’s ability level is relatively low, the coach needs to guide from the side and provide theoretical support for the athlete. But along with the elevation of the athlete’s competitive level, what must be elevated together is definitely the athlete’s personal theoretical knowledge reserve.

Only by better mastering theoretical knowledge can an athlete better think about which direction they should develop toward if they want to elevate their personal ability.

And if one allows an athlete to purely and ignorantly follow the coach’s guidance for training during their youth to achieve the so-called effects of ‘practice makes perfect’ and ‘they will understand in the future’, then there is a very high probability that it will leave some difficult-to-correct bad habits in the subtle details that the coach failed to observe.

Actually, Su Yu also knew that Pei Dingshan’s 1v1 theoretical lesson with him wasn’t some simple punishment, but perhaps because the early resistance psychology had already formed, when facing Pei Dingshan, it was indeed hard for him not to feel annoyed.

Upon hearing the words “the fourth time,” Su Yu pursed his lips. He was reviewing where the mistake in his starting movement just now was.

“Hip joint.”

Pei Dingshan just lightly said two words from the side. Su Yu reacted very quickly. In the starting blocks training just now, more of his attention was placed on the starting preparatory posture as well as the forward lean angle of his torso, forgetting the transmission process where power first originates from the hip joint, failing to utilize his own hip joint power well.

This kind of error was not big, yet it wasn’t small either. After all, for a zero-basis athlete like him, wanting him to quickly master what is called hip joint power generation was already not a simple matter. But very obviously, Pei Dingshan’s requirements and expectations for him were far more than this.

If an ordinary coach were to look at the training mode of these two, they would definitely feel that these two are really a case of one dares to teach and the other dares to learn. After all, it was entirely a training mode that pursued quality over quantity, which for grassroots coaches would always make them not so reassured.

In addition, some other coaches of the provincial team also knew that Pei Dingshan thought exceptionally highly of Su Yu, so from time to time someone would also come to watch Pei Dingshan’s training of Su Yu. Along with watching, they would still raise concerns about Su Yu’s situation.

“Xiao Pei, Su Yu’s explosive power is really not quite up to par. In this starting phase, including the entire running process, can his speed really come up?”

Pei Dingshan, on the other hand, was very calm about this. He said coolly: “Under Su Yu’s current competitive level, the lag in the start does not have as big an impact on him as everyone anticipates. And except for the starting phase which has higher requirements for maximum strength, the subsequent transition running and sprinting phases are actually the factors where the efficiency of strength utilization and the ability to use elastic potential energy have a more critical impact on speed.”

This set of theories by Pei Dingshan was still relatively unfamiliar to the coaches of the provincial team. They held a skeptical attitude toward it. A phrase they often said when discussing in private was “it doesn’t matter, when the camp-ending test race begins, we will know how Xiao Pei’s training effect is.”

As for the buy one get one free gift Zhou Yuang, during this period of time he was consistently in the painful process of relearning sprinting techniques. Just changing his dominant power-generating leg alone made him utterly exhausted. Although he had already made psychological preparations, during this period of time relearning and changing his dominant power-generating leg, Zhou Yuang also encountered quite a few setbacks, always having an illusion as if he already didn’t know how to run.

When it was truly painful, he had also briefly regretted whether what he did was right or wrong in the end. But in the process of joint training with Su Yu, he also saw Su Yu, whose physical conditions were far inferior to his own, biting his teeth to train in a field he had never touched until his face turned pale and he was drenched in sweat.

Truth be told, every time he saw their Room 303’s Little Ancestor biting his teeth and stubbornly training like this, Zhou Yuang also felt that the difficulty of his own training didn’t seem to be too big after all.

As the training time passed bit by bit, the 38 days of summer camp training time had very little left in the blink of an eye.

And as the footsteps of the summer camp’s end drew closer bit by bit, the start time of the summer camp ending test race, which served as the qualifiers for the National U16 Athletics Base Tournament, was also getting closer and closer!