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