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