The Panthers are in sunny Fort Lauderdale, training at Pinecrest School, both short and long course. The team hotel is right on A1A on the beach for the third-straight season. They will be on the trip through the 16th of January before resuming the regular season schedule second semester against the University of Chicago on Jan. 23.
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The sixth blog entry comes from sophomore Sam Keele:
As our training trip begins to wind down, the intensity of the workouts has only gotten more difficult. But luckily, the weather has continued to improve and this morning was the warmest morning yet. Our morning practice consisted of a set which the whole team had been expecting and is one which we do periodically throughout the season. The Mid-Distance group had to do two sets of goal 50s. One set of goal fifties consists of ten 50s on 2:00 minutes holding the fastest pace possible. This set tests us both mentally and physically.
Even though the weather was much warmer today it was very cloudy, so some people decided to take advantage of the clouds to head indoors to the mall. Two vans made the long journey to the mall, which took about an hour to get to. We spent about four grueling hours walking up and down the halls of this enormous mall.
The final practice consisted of an hour of swimming and an hour of lifting. Many of us were relieved by the fact that we were only in the water for half the time as usual. The hardest part of the swim was 50 meter underwaters, which had to be done until everyone was able to make them, in the end we did 12 total.
As the trip comes to an end its seems to me everyone has had a very good time, but are also looking forward to getting home to their own beds and being able to have some clean clothes.
