On Endings

January 14, 2009: The First Day of The Rest of Our Lives

Then:

Now:

What a difference a day makes.

We all arrived safely back in Oberlin last last night without even any flight delays. After a full day of swimming and travel we were simply beat, so we all went back to our dorm rooms, apartments, and houses to sleep off the trip. Thankfully Mark Fino, being as weary as the rest of us, decided to give us today off.

It's amazing how quickly life returns to normal (or whatever amounts to it at Oberlin). Waking up in a room that I've seen one night in the past three weeks didn't even faze me, nor did walking across the frozen tundra of North Quad and Wilder Bowl to get to Dascomb for lunch. It all seemed pretty normal. In a few days the only reminders of Florida will be our gloriously tan bodies and the aches that those bodies give us when we try to swim.

Tomorrow it will be back to work with a new practice schedule, a pool that we've heard hasn't had its heater on in a while, and cold and snow to enjoy on the trek to practice instead of sunny, musical car rides.

So what, in the end, was the trip for? Several of my fellow swimmers have expressed the sentiment that the trip was an enjoyable experience, and in the end, I think it really was. Sure, the swimming was extremely rough, but it's not like we would have been worked any easier back in Oberlin. But we did get to relax in the sun, bond with our fellow swimmers, and generally enjoy being at 80 degrees in January.

At the end of Florida (and throughout Winter Term) everybody on a team gets just the tiniest bit sick of seeing each each other all day, every day. But at the same time, all that time together allowed us to bond as a team. There are stories to tell about this trip that I haven't had the time to tell (like when Corey, Jake, and Johnny took a kayak out without paddles and capsized at least three times), stories that I probably shouldn't repeat on this blog, and probably tons of stories that I don't even know about. It's all these shared experiences that bring us together and truly make us a team.

So Florida is just another of those experiences. It's tiring, it hurts. But Mark Muthersbaugh may have put it best driving to our last practice (and his last Florida practice ever):

"You know, we're all bitching about Florida. But you know we'll all be back next year."

See you next year.

Total Yards Swum: 0. And Counting.

A few notes on the blogging experience:

-Thanks to everyone who has been reading and pointing out my mistakes. I usually type out my entries as mostly stream-of-consciousness works and therefore am prone to making typos and errors. Luckily, my fellow swimmers and readers, being all bright people, are quick to call me out on these mistakes, from my simply forgetting "the"s and "of"s to more substantial mistakes like describing short-course swimming as being 25 meters (we actually do 25 yards) or over-exaggerating the feats of our alumni friend Fred Bobb (who has written to tell me that he swims three times a week, not the twice a day that I had him at. Still very impressive).

-Speaking of Fred Bobb, Scott sent me the picture of him and the Oberlin breastrokers before our big race:

Jebran, Fred, Me, Mike, and Bud proving that breastrokers are awesome.

-My dad has been making very interesting Google Maps from the meterage markers I've been giving out at the end of each blog entry. The final map can be found here. The rings are centered on the pool at Founder's Park and go out for each measurement I gave here in this blog. It looks like we made it a good third of the way to Cuba!

-To any readers who have read this blog and wanted to get into swimming or learn to swim (which I think is the wrong lesson to pick up), I know Oberlin College offers swim lessons at Phillips Gym. Other then that ask around at your local YMCA (where I learned to swim) or swimming pool during the summer. Chances are they have lessons programs or a swim team of their very own.

-As for me, I've work to do. Not done with Winter Term just yet. Probably later today I'll start another blog for the remainder of Winter Term, which will be less focused then this one. (Translation: Less swimming and more swears.) I'm flip-flopping about whether to post the link here: if all the nice parents and followers of my swimming want to read my rambling thoughts about nothing in particular, shoot me a line.

-Thanks are in order: Thanks to my family, my Mom and Dad, and Peter and Stephanie, who are always wildly encouraging of my stupid ideas. Thanks to my fellow swimmers who make swimming bearable. Thanks to my roommates: Chris, Jebran, Jon, and Nick, who lived with, slept with, watched TV with, massaged with, and most importantly fed me this past week. Thanks to all the seniors and coaches who drove us around in Florida, especially Mark, who probably should have kicked me out of the Kia a few times. Thanks to the nice people of Tavernier, Islamorada, and Key Largo, who put up with more then they deserve, and thanks to the people at Ocean Pointe Suites and Founder's Park who had us for a week. Thanks to Mark Fino for suggesting and supporting this blog, and mostly thanks to all the readers and commenters.

On The Extreme Temperature Shift

January 13, 2009: Training Trip Day 8

So we done.

I am currently sitting at the gate in the Ft. Lauderdale Airport waiting for flight to Atlanta, where we will transfer to a flight back to Akron/Canton (which will most likely be delayed due to inclement weather conditions, which we will discuss).

This morning we did our traditional end-of-Florida set, a challenge set of decreasing 100s. We start with 3 on 1:45, then drop and do 3 on 1:40, then 3 on 1:30, and so on. It's not the roughest set because when you get too tired to swim you just stop. But there's still some mental effort required.

We were sitting on the deck waiting for the kids with more endurance then us to finish when Sarah Cassella made a very profound observation. This morning we were sitting outside in our bathing suits enjoying the warmth and in less then 24 hours we would be back in Oberlin, dressed in multiple layers, and still freezing our butts off.

Since my mind is currently consumed with traveling, I'll wait until we get back into the freezing cold to wrap up this blog and deliver my final thoughts on the whole training trip expierence.

Hopefully we won't be trapped in Atlanta.

Completely Total Meters: 70,680 (+meet)

On the Wrapping up of a Trip

January 12, 2009: Training Trip Day 7

-We are not the only swim team staying at our hotel. This fact was driven home yesterday afternoon when our own Laura Fries, while wandering from room to room looking for some dish detergent, accidentally walked into the open door of the guys from another school! This fact was really driven home a few hours later when Shira Korn, looking for people to hang out with, wandered into a room and complained about the lack of cleanliness, especially the pizza box on the floor. This room, of course, belonged to guys from the other team.

Almost there...

This morning, Mark Fino decided to give us the 'last long set' of Florida. This set consisted of swimming freestyle (with the option of various toys) in the following meterage configuration: 800, 600, 400, 200, 600, 400, 200, 400, 200, 200. For those unwilling or unable to do the math, that adds up to a 4000 meter set, which is in layman's terms "a long set".

Of course, at this point in time, we were not really in the shape or mood to do a long set. Since we were able to use toys, I was able to make it through the set pulling with paddles, which afforded me some more rest at the cost of completely destroying my arms for the rest of the day. It's those little trade-offs that keep things interesting.

But the time for keeping things interesting has almost run out, hasn't it? Early tomorrow afternoon we'll be leaving the warm weather and long pools of Key Largo to embark on our long airplane journey up north to return to the cold (and I've been told snow) of Oberlin.

There are a few difficulties concerning returning to Oberlin. The first of course concerning the current state of our rooms. For the last week we've been living in, messing up, filling up with food and subsequently emptying out with food the hotel rooms that we've been living in. While we've been keeping them in relatively good shape (Mark Fino relayed to us the horror stories of Spring Break hotel patrons), we've still been, ya know, living in them. Which is enough for 5/6 college students to create a pretty substantial mess to clean.

The next, of course, is packing. Our old 'friend' returns to haunt us one last time for this trip. Extra fun in this packing spree is putting our wet swimming stuff back into the same bag as our dry clothing.

Then there is the trip itself. I may do another photo entry, but I'm considering just writing a wrapup after our long day of travel. We'll see.

Almost Completely Total Meters: 58,160 (+meet)

ps: Jordan looks great in her bikini
pps: Shira looks great in everything

On Alumni and Life After Swimming (if we make it that far)

January 11, 2009: Training Trip Day 6

I managed to leave my room and the NFC divisional game (even Mark Fino came over because we have HD) to make this blog update because I care so much about you, the reader.

-Illness update: Thanks to the magic of medication, I have my head cold under a fair amount of control and (hopefully) will be able to get rid of it in a few more days (just in time to leave Florida!). There are only a few problems left with this stupid cold. The first is that whatever leftover mucus is busy collecting itself in my throat and constricting my breathing. Let me tell you, swimming while you're coughing out phlegm trying to get a full breath is pretty much the complete opposite of fun. The other good news that this cold provides is that I've started hearing complaints from my teammates that they're catching what I have. I guess that the team that sticks together sicks together.

-I've been hearing a lot of positive feedback about the blog. Although we have a small time/place window for receiving wireless, the other swimmers have been giving me a good amount of feedback and I've heard through the grapevine that we've got some swimmers' parents and other college-affiliated people reading. Thanks a lot!

-Finding a radio station to listen to down here in Key Largo is sometimes difficult. I'm pretty sure that my standard traveling vehicle, the golden Kia with the slightly risqué name driven by Mark Muthersbaugh, has some sort of radio deficiency like a chopped-off antenna or something, because we are constantly getting fuzzy reception (although maybe the problem is listening to a station that purports to be radio for "Key West and Cuba"). While the drivers with fancier vans get satellite radio (among other perks like in-van TV and a little screen that shows what's behind you), we have to obey the whims of the capricious radio gods, which sometimes leads to impromptu car dance parties.

So.... yeah, anyways,

Last night we had a pleasant little surprise. Not a pleasant surprise on the "practice is cancelled" level, but still a nice one. Fred Bobb, Oberlin '79, came by to see our practice and do a little swim-off. Since Fred is a breaststroker, he swam me and the three other Oberlin breaststrokers (Bud, Jebran, and Mike) in a short little fun 50-meter race. While we beat Fred, he certainly gave us a run for our money.

We got to talk to Fred a little bit before the race and learned a few very interesting things (not least that he's reading the blog: Hi Fred!). He's still swimming twice a day, and involved in Masters swimming (even making qualifying times for Nats!).

Thinking about Fred makes me think about my own future with swimming. I've been swimming since I was 6, so I've got 15 years of competitive swimming behind me and only one more to go. Will I continue to swim like Fred did? Probably not.

With all of my bellyaching about how rough swimming is and how much it sucks, I wonder if I'll miss it. People I talk to that stopped swimming after high school or who have graduated college always say they miss swimming (though usually with the qualification that they don't miss the practices).

Will I swim for recreation or exercise? I'll probably need the exercise to keep in shape, but I'm dreadfully unmotivated on my own. Even though swimming is a great exercise for older people or those young people that already have joint issues (thanks to swimming), I don't know if I will find the time in my life after Oberlin.

Sometimes that makes me sad. But other times I remember what swimming has put me through (with stuff like this week) and I'm not too concerned about giving it up.

Speaking of this week, only four practices left!

Total Meters Gone: 46,240 (+meet)

On the Burning of Fishes

January 10, 2009: Training Trip Day 5

A few notes before the meat of this entry:

- Our nice beach dinner last night hit a slight snag: Mark Fino didn't realize that the park that we were planning on grilling at (about 15 minutes walking distance from the hotel) closed at sundown. Those of us lucky enough to walk to the park were met by cars right at the end of the walk, picked up, and driven back to the hotel. To Mark Fino and the seniors' credit, we did eventually get to have a nice dinner on the beach. It was just a little later then we were hoping for.

- Before each practice we either do static stretches (consisting of just standing in a static position and stretching) or active stretching, which involves "funny walk" and "butt slaps". "Funny Walk" is a long-stepping walk with waving, outstretched arms that attempts to be an efficient way to stretch but ends up looking like something out of a Monty Python sketch. "Butt slaps" involve placing your hands over their glutes and walking in a way that lets your feet hit against your hands. Both of these look so ridiculous, especially when performed as a group, that those of us obsessed with the BBC/Discovery Channel series Planet Earth have begun comparing them to animal mating rituals, which helps take our minds off our work.

Speaking of work,

Yesterday I was anticipating a nice relaxing afternoon and evening and then for us to get slammed with something difficult today.

I hate it when I'm right.

This morning we arrived to the pool (after Mark Fino and our injured swimmers got there even earlier to run around Founder's Park) and were told to get in early. Getting in the pool early is never a good sign.

So we did our warmup, then an easy warmup set, and then Mark Fino told us that we would be doing Fishburn today.

Well poop.

Fishburn, to those of you who are unaware of it, is a 3500-total meter set that involves a decreasing of repetition with an increase in yardage and speed. We start with 5 100's on an easy time, then do 4 200's on a faster time, then 3 300's, 2 400's, and 1 500's. No rest between, of course, that would be too easy.

The trick is that each portion's time increases at a set rate. For example, on my interval, the 100s were on 1:45, an easy time, and the 200s increased by 1:10 to be on 2:55, a time while still easy, is much less manageable. The problem is that an increase of 1:10 per 100 is difficult because 1:10 is an extremely fast time to swim a 100 in during practice.

Combined with the lack of rest between portions of the set and the constant need to increase or maintain speed, it's obvious to tell why even Mark Fino admits that you're not supposed to make Fishburn.

So what's the point of a set that you're not supposed to make?

The traditional answer, of course, is that by continuing to persevere even in the face of insurmountable odds, that you can prove your own mettle and come out of the set stronger (well, not physically). By pushing yourself to make intervals that you have little chance of making, you're training your mind and body to push itself even when you're tired. This is, of course, little solace to you when you're swimming the set itself.

To me, Fishburn is itself a microcosm for the training trip practice experience. It's rough, it hurts, it basically sucks, and it feels like it will never end. But then you end, and you feel, while not not great, at least pretty alright about the whole thing. You realize what that work was for, and you realize why it was necessary.

And hey, only six more practices to go.

Total Meters Went: 36,420 (+meet)

P.S. After practice, we swam some relays against Boston College, in order to help them fulfill their training trip meet requirement. Boston College, being a larger school then Oberlin, had a larger team that handily beat us in the relays (with a few exceptions and some great racing!). The fact that we had just, you know, done Fishburn, deterred our bodies but not our spirits, because now we can say "We swim Fishburn for warmup!"

Just for fun, our practice today:

600 Choice
4 x 200 Drill/Swim by 50
3 x 300 Pull with Paddles @ 4:30
{5 x 100 Free @ 1:45/others}
{4 x 200 Free @ 2:55/others}
{3 x 300 Free @ 4:05/others}
{2 x 400 Free @ 5:15/others}
{1 x 500 Free @ 6:25/others}
10 x 50 Odds Kick/Even Drill
Relays w/ Boston College

On Meets

January 9, 2009: Training Trip Day 4

The poorly-kept secret of training trips is that they are not, technically speaking, training trips. NCAA regulations state that if a team is going to travel somewhere, they have to do so because of a meet.

So today, still at Founder's Park, we had our meet.




The meet is a nice little break from the intense practices we've been having, although we still of course have to put our best effort forth because well, a meet is a meet.

Swimming against us were the Colorado College Tigers, a team just arriving for their own training trip. The Tigers were very evenly matched against us, with many good races. While both the Oberlin Men's and Women's teams won their meets, we did so mostly by the depth of our team: Colorado could only field one relay per relay event and rarely could fill their portion of the eight-lane pool.

That is, of course, not to count out our own contributions. While, of course, individual results varied, on the whole the team put forth an incredible amount of effort, especially considering that we've been getting worn down by practices for the past few days. I personally surprised myself by the amount of effort I was able to put forth, with my cold and my state of being worn down I expected to be floundering in the water like a drowning child. Instead, I put up some times that maybe would be impressive if I had any idea what good long-course meters times were.

A few of our swimmers' parents even made it down to see the meet, which was an extremely nice gesture. It's always good to have support from the sidelines, whether it's in the cold of an Oberlin Winter or the warmth of a Flordia... winter.

Another positive thing about this day is because of the meet (and Mark Fino's generosity), we only have the meet today, no evening practice. With that added relaxation and rest, and the Traditional Senior-made dinner taking place on the beach, it should be a pleasent evening.

And then we'll go back to practicing.

Final Meet Scores:

Women: Win, 122.5-103.5
Men: Win, 107-97

Total Meters: 29,920 (+meet)

Meet Pictures

Photobucket Album

On Hurricanes, Strength and Healthiness

January 8, 2009: Training Trip Day 3

Before we get to some content, here are some pictures of the beautiful pool at Founders Park:



This pool is extremely nice. It's in a pretty park, and the water is never that cold, thanks to the warm weather we've been having. Being able to swim without freezing is always a benefit.

Speaking of weather, last night was a very interesting experience. One of the drawbacks of an outdoor pool is that its open to all weather, not just the hot sun. Right about when we were getting in the pool for our 7-9 practice, the wind began to pick up and rain started falling. It continued to rain and wind (or "hurricane", as we called it) for almost all of the practice, soaking our coaches as they stood at the end of the pool. Now they know what it feels like.

Now for some slightly less fun news: I'm sick.

Not sick of swimming (though that certainly is coming), I've developed a condition close to the common cold, which leaves with me what doctors commonly call "the sniffles". While it is certainly not the worst condition that could hit me during training trip (the need for lots of liquids and good nutrition matches up well with the needs of training trip), the fact that I need a lot of rest to help my body recover does not entirely jive with swimming two 5000+ meter practices a day.

The other major part of this little illness that is causing slightly more problems in the water is that it's causing a general state of achiness, which segues nicely into the other major issue I (and others) am facing during training trip.

We're weak. And sore.

Training twice a day (with a bit of extra dryland) does not give a lot of time for your muscles to recover. I'm experiencing a general amount of muscle soreness, which doesn't help when it comes to trying to push yourself through the water.

Being broken down, of course, is one of Mark Fino's General Philosophies of Swimming. The apparent trick is to work your swimmers hard and keep their noses to the grindstone so that when you do ease up on them (taper, which happens right before our conference meet), you get explosive results. Since this has worked for me several times in the past, it's hard to argue with its efficacy.

But it still sucks right now.

Oh: I've been asked to provide a sample practice. Here is what we did last night, during the hurricane:

3 x 400 Swim/Kick/Pull
4 x 150 Kick/Drill/Swim
4 x 200 Free Descend 1-4 @ 3:00
4 x 250 Free (w/ paddles) Descend 1-4 @ 3:30
4 x 300 Free (w/ paddles & zoomers) Descend 1-4 @4:00
8 x 100 Kick (Odds Easy/Evens Fast) @ 2:00
200 Warmdown

Total: 5800 Meters

Total Meterage: 22,920

On Swimming and Schedules

January 7, 2009: Training Trip Day 2

Of course, the point of training trip is to swim. But we've hardly talked about this, so we'd better get started.

The Oberlin College Swimming and Diving Team is practicing for the week at the fabulous Founders Park in Islamorada, FL, the Island of Villages(!) (http://www.islamorada.fl.us/newsite/founders_park/default.asp). This park boasts a very nice eight-lane, 50-meter swimming pool. (Both 50-meter pools and the art of swimming of them are colloquially referred to as "long-course". This is because it is longer then the standard 25-meter pools we usually swim in. I realize that this may be hard to follow.)

(I was interrupted at this point by several of my teammates and was told to both document my bean-dipping at the hands of Corey Spiro and the fact that 'man-tanning' is apparently what all the cool kids do.)

Practicing long-course, to swimmers used to practicing short-course (guess why it's called that), can be an interesting challenge. Immediately apparent is psychological challenge of the size of the pool. It's a tad disconcerting to swim what you would think would be most of the length of the pool and look to see the opposite wall still a very long way away.

Next, of course, is the difficulty of the practices themselves. The Florida training trip isn't called one because we're messing around and playing sharks and minnows. One of this blog's taglines describes training trip as "the most physically demanding week of the year”, and it's showing already. We've been starting easy, going 4000-5000 meters per practice, but Mark Fino wants us to peak at 14,000 meters per day (with two practices per day, that's 7000 each. That is, empirically speaking, a lot of swimming).

Swimming two practices a day has its own downsides. One of this blog's other taglines reads "Eat Swim Eat Sleep Eat Swim Eat Sleep Repeat". This is not an exaggeration. My schedule today so far has been:

7:15: Wake up, eat breakfest.
7:30: Depart for pool.
8-10:00: Swim
10-10:30: Drylands
10:50-11:30: Eat
11:30-Now: Nap.

After I complete this blog post, I plan on enjoying the glorious Florida weather for a bit , then eating more (and possibly napping more) before going to our 7-9 PM practice, then eating again before going to sleep and repeating the cycle all over again.

That is, if I live through our next practice. They have been exceedingly rough. But that's a story for another day.

Total Meters Traveled by Propelling Ourselves through the Water: 13,550

January 5th, 2009: Traveling

Photobucket Album

On Hotel Living

January 6, 2009: Training Trip Day 1

So we've arrived in Florida and started swimming. We'll talk about that later, because we have something much more pertinent to discuss: hotel living.


We have made our base camp at the fabulous Ocean Pointe Suites in Key Largo (http://www.opsuites.com/), and are living in these two bedroom suites as only college-funded athletic teams can: five or six to a room.

Only a few issues here:

1) Obviously there is bed sharing. This is fine, as we're all mature adults(?) and can handle sharing beds for a week. Even if some of us snore.
2) We don't have our own food. This problem was fixed by making a massive trip to the local Winn-Dixie and buying out their stock. Now we can eat only like cash-strapped culinary-deprived college students can!
3) The wireless internet service can be described as spotty at best. I personally do not receive wireless in my room, and must go to the office and sit in the cool shade and watch the beach as I type my posts. Life is rough.

The Ocean Point(e) Suites offer much more then just beds and poor wireless, though. Look at all you can find here!

Tennis!

Beach Volleyball!

Large Lizards!

Clearly we are in the land of kings.

Total Meters Swam (Swum?): 4000

On Packing, Unpacking, Repacking, and Eventually Repeating

January 4 2009: Training Trip Day -1

One of the more obvious but less thought-about things about training trip is that it is a trip.

Which means you have to pack.

As a college student, packing has become a large part of my life for the last few years. At the end of the summer, I most of the stuff I own at home and cart it off to school. Then I unpack it into my dorm room. I pack stuff to go home with me on breaks (probably too much stuff) and then have to pack it back up to bring it back. At the end of the school year, I pack ALL my stuff back up and bring it back home.

I loathe packing.

The special thing about training trip is that I'm not flying to Florida from home. Instead, my parents (generously) drove me back to Oberlin so I can fly down to Cleveland with the team.
That makes packing interesting. Consider the factors:

1) I brought cold-weather clothing home, because it is cold at home.
2) I need warm-weather clothing to take to Florida, because it is warm in Florida (this varies, but that is a story for another day)
3) I need to pack my cold-weather clothing to bring it back to Oberlin, where I will need it for another three and a half months because it doesn't warm up here anytime soon.
4) All my warm-weather clothing is at Oberlin, because it's blisteringly hot there for the four weeks of school when it's not cold.

So this means that I have to pack my clothing (and books and Christmas presents and legal documents) at home, cart them to Oberlin, unpack everything, and then repack everything for Florida all the day that I get there.

This is less then fun.

Luckily, there are a few things that work in my advantage, mostly the fact that I'm living alone in my generously large double for Winter Term, so that I can simply leave all the unpacked cold-weather clothing sitting around until I get back from Florida and have more time to put them away.

One problem?:

I haven't unpacked yet. Oops.

On the Necessity and Purpose of a Training Trip

January 3, 2009: Training Trip Day -2

So I was out to dinner with some lifeguarding friends a week or so ago, and naturally, us all being college swimmers or ex-college swimmers, we got around to the topic of our upcoming training trips.

After sharing stories about our own experiences on training trips and our own anxieties about the upcoming month, I believe the consensus we arrived at was something along the lines of "training trips are not very fun", except with probably some slightly more colorful language.

However, thing a friend of mine said did stand out to me. He said that "Training trip is really the beginning of the season."

Fastforward about a week. I'm at a Christmas party talking to an old family friend, who asks me about training trip. I explain the basics (Winter Term, going to Florida, awfulness) to her, and she asks a question.

"Why do you go on a trip? Couldn't you just practice at school?"

I didn't have an answer for her.

It certainly doesn't make a whole lot of sense to pay a fairly substantial amount of money to travel to a warmer place (in the middle of winter, when it won't be extremely warm) to pay for lodging to reserve a strange pool to practice when we could stay in our dorms and swim at the pool we already had the college build for us.

Of course, if we had to stay in Oberlin for the entire month of January, I'm betting we'd get a result similar to Fargo.

So that's part of it: It's just nice to take a break from the cold and go down to the warm. As little fun as many other parts of training trip can be, that aspect of it is at least enjoyable.

I'm betting the other major reason that most colleges do a training trip ties back into my first friend's quote, about training trip being the beginning of the season. Of course, its' silly to ignore the first half of the season, which involved a whole lot of training and some important meets. But the point still stands that taking a trip simply to concentrate on swimming is a great way to well, concentrate on swimming. It sets the pace for the second half of the season and kickstarts it in a way that is both intense and memorable to the swimmers involved.

Maybe that is why so many swimmers have mixed-to-negative feelings about training trip. It's an extremly rough week, both physically and mentally, but it sets a pace that can result in some really great achivements down the line.

Of course, the worst part is when you end training trip, go back to the cold and snow, and try to maintain training trip's intensity. But that's a story for another day.

On The Process of Starting a Blog (And the Various Factors Affecting This Decision)

January 2, 2009: Training Trip Day -3

I have something of a love/hate relationship with writing.

I like to think of myself as a creative person. I enjoy drawing though I'm rubbish at it, I enjoy making music though I'm too lazy to practice to keep my musical abilities sharp, and I enjoy writing to the point where I like transcribing my crazy thoughts to paper, or at least to a computer file. The problem is that writing creatively, just like doing anything else, is difficult. Coming up with things to writing is the fun part. The not-so-fun parts is actually writing those things.

Being a history major has hindered my ability to write for enjoyment. I do so much writing for school, I find it hard to make myself sit in front of a computer screen and spit out ideas when I'm not trying to get a grade for it.

This past semester, however, I was able to write for my own enjoyment a few times. This took the form of a bizarre, nonsensical Facebook rambling where I announced my candidacy for Oberlin College's Student Senate (without, of course, getting my name on the actual ballot which would just be silly). I sent it out, expecting my friends to be like "oh that crazy Dan, always saying crazy things with his craziness".

Instead, I got extremely positive feedback and became the reigning expert on the inner workings of the Student Senate for some friends of mine.
They'd ask, "So Dan, if you're running for Student Senate, do you know what it does?"
And I'd say, "Absolutely not."

In the end, I won the write-in ballot with an astounding twelve votes, putting me only 100-odd votes below the threshold for election onto the Student Senate. The runner-up of the write-in was then-Vice Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin. Obviously the loss to me shattered Mrs. Palin's self-confidence and directly impacted the result of the 2008 Presidential Election.

Bolstered by this success, I wrote a few other Facebook ramblings (one of which lead to me being called a "meathead jock", which is my favorite way to describe myself these days). And I found that I genuinely enjoyed writing these silly rambling posts.

At Oberlin, for the month of January, we have a "Winter Term" where instead of taking classes, we work on a project of some sorts, which can take a myriad of forms. Friends of mine go home and do unpaid internships. Others go to foreign countries for aid work. Others stay at Oberlin and take a class or put on a play or sing in a choir. These are the more rational Winter Term projects. I know of people who have grown out their beards, attempted to make snowshoes, or wanted to make a trebuchet. I even know of a kid who stopped talking as their Winter Term project, communicating with a note pad for the month of January. The sky is the limit for these projects.

As a winter athlete, I knew I wanted to do something simple for my project, as I'd have to stay in Oberlin and practice in January. My recent enjoyment of writing made me think of the idea of a daily blog, where I would write whatever the heck I want for my own enjoyment.

I pitched this idea to my swim coach and potential Winter Term Advisor, Mark 'Danger' Fino. He was in favor of the idea, but also gave me a counterproposition: I also write a blog detailing my expierences of our early-January annual Florida training trip. Not being one to stand down from a challenge put forth by Mark Fino, I accepted his offer.

This blog is a challenge for me in a few ways: Not only will I have to devote valuable sleeping time in Florida to compsing blog entries, but I'll have to refrain from my beloved wackyness and concentrate on more composed writing in order to properly document the Winter Term life.

I also thought to myself, "I'll probably have to start a few days before training trip in order to properly convey the full Florida Trip expierence." Which is why I'm writing today.

So I ask you, the potential reader, to join me on this adventure. Training trip is sometimes fun, most often mind-bendingly difficult. But it's a very interesting expierence, and I'd like to share it with you. And maybe next time I'll even talk about swimming a little bit. We'll see.

On The Author and Purpose of this Weblog

If you're reading this, you've probably been referred to this blog either by myself or by my swim coach Mark Fino, who I've been told is going to do something to get people at Oberlin's Athletic Department to read it.

That means that you should know the basics behind this blog, but we'll cover them anyways.

My name is Daniel Holm, and I am a 3rd Year History Major at Oberlin College, a liberal arts school located closest to Cleveland, Ohio. More importantly for this blog I am a member of the Oberlin College Swimming and Diving Team, a Division 3 NCAA team that, like most other NCAA teams, goes on a training trip to somewhere warm during the winter months. We are like migratory birds in this way.

The purpose of this blog is to detail not only my expierences of the Oberlin Swimming and Diving Team's 2009 trip to Key Largo, Florida, but to generally create a more detailed understanding of the entire training trip process for those of us unlucky enough to never be able to take such a trip.

This will be facilitated by (hopefully) daily updates in which I will write about a certain aspect of the training trip expierence, whether it be the actual swimming, the accomodations that we live in, activities we do besides swimming, or the minutae of living with your teammates.

Comments, of course, are more then welcome.