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 first blog entry comes from sophomore Sky Boggio:
The second day of training trip was a reminder of what training trip is all about. Four hours in the pool and another hour of dryland are an intense start to a tough trip. The morning practice started at 8:00 am, which isn’t early for a morning practice (usually morning workouts will start between 6 am or 7 am). But, it seemed earlier with the clouds covering the sun most of the time.
The temperature was in the high 40’s at the beginning, but once in the heated water the complaining seemed to decrease. Many of the guys put on swim caps to retain body heat, which helped but didn’t make it feel too warm.
After the morning practice was over I went straight to my room to take a nap. Some went to the beach, but others didn’t have the energy, plus it was only in the 60’s. My day was nothing special to talk about because I just stayed in my room basically the whole time in between practices.
After a long day of travel yesterday and a couple of practices sleep seemed to be the best option, tomorrow will be a better day to hang out on the beach.
Finally, the afternoon practice consisted of a stand up set known as “Melvins”, named after the gold medal-winning 200 butterflyer, Melvin Stewart. Stewart decided that if he was going to break the world record in the 200 butterfly he needed to even split it (make the first 100 the same speed as the second one).
He made up a set where one does a 100 off the block at a very fast pace, a 200 easy swim, followed by a 100 all out sprint from a push which is supposed to beat the time of the beginning swim. It was a tough way to finish the day.
I hope anyone reading this doesn’t think that I am a complainer because I understand working hard is the purpose of the trip and this team is going to be great because of it. I honestly wouldn’t want it to be any other way.
I think our trainer Dave Lake described it really well today when he said, “Anyone can do this training when they feel great. It’s how you perform when you feel like crap that makes a good Division 1 athlete.”
