The Panthers are in sunny Fort Lauderdale, training at Pinecrest Academy, both short and long course.They will be on the trip through the 15th of January before resuming the regular season schedule second semester against Carthage College on Jan. 14.
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The third entry comes from senior Nathan Rahe:"FINNA QUAD RUNNERS!!" This is the war cry that is shouted by the five members of the group of guys that always warm-up together before breaking up into the separate groups.
To begin this rough day of training, the men's team began with an hour of football field suicides, sprints, and abs. The intensity that was brought out during these dreadful 100-yard dashes pushed everyone to the max, gaining the most effort toward the workout from everyone. At the conclusion of dryland, we quickly changed into our ratty, tight speedos and hopped into the pool for another hour-long “fun activity.” This set began with a few hundred yards of warm-up, then quickly turned into our main set that was a total of 2,250 yards long and max effort. It consisted of a 500 swim, 250 kick, 400 swim, 200 kick, 300 swim, 150 kick, 200 swim, 100 kick, 100 swim, and a 50 kick. It took the majority of us about 26-27 minutes to finish. Even though it was a long, hard, straight swim, we all put forth our best effort to swim as quickly as we could to get our best times.
After a rough morning practice, the team went to the beach to bask in the lovely Florida rays, swim in the ocean and have fun on the beach. Others….were too tired to come to the beach and just wanted to rest before the infamous “Pain Train” set we had to come later that evening.
This set is Coach Kyle’s favorite set to give us during training trip. This was the last time I was going to have to swim this distance IM set (THANK GOODNESS!). 5x 400IM’s + 100 Fly was the challenge of the night to complete on various intervals. Many of the sprinters were given the option to do the set short course instead of long course, and many stepped up to the challenge. This was the first time we did this set in a two hour practice, which many of us seemed to like better than lifting before hand. The team all successfully completed Kyle’s mental challenge and all the seniors cheered to it being the last time we ever had to do that set. It was indeed a great day to be a Panther.
Lastly, from Mike Brady’s infamous words of wisdom, Finna Quad Runners went above and beyond for today's rough day of training.
