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 seventh entry comes from a pair of Panthers. The first version, from junior Mike Schalla:Wednesday's morning practice was a bit different than most days. Both the men’s and women’s teams were given the choice of whether to go the pool to do a normal workout or do an ocean workout. The ocean workout consists of swimming to different buoys in the ocean and running along the beach. The combination of the long distances between buoys, the waves, and the tides made it difficult to swim fast and in a straight line. On top of that, many of the younger swimmers and even some of the older ones were very nervous about the possibility of swimming into jellyfish and other ocean animals (Brady Huemann, Nathan Welchin, Rob Miller).
We started with a warm-up of swimming out to a buoy, then along the coastline to a different buoy and then back in to the beach. We stuck together and everyone soon realized that there weren’t any 20-foot sharks and that we had nothing to be afraid of. About half way through our ocean workout the wind picked up and before we knew it, we were swimming in what felt like 15-foot waves. In reality, they weren’t close to that size but the waves did make swimming much harder and we left the ocean feeling tired and a bit sandy. The team members who didn’t choose the ocean workout didn’t get off easy either, they had a tough pool workout that helped build their aerobic capacity.
With clouds in the sky and a chilly wind, mostly everyone decided to stay indoors and get a little nap in.
We arrived to the pool that evening with the sky having a beautiful orange sunset, a nice start to the evening. Night practice was an hour of dryland and an hour of swimming. The theme tonight for swimming was shorter sprints, working on top-end speed rather than longer aerobic training. Everyone was doing something fast off the blocks with freestylers doing 50 and 100's and stroke swimmers doing multiple 25's. Dryland was a test set where we had to do max pushups, sit-ups, and pull-ups. The goal was to beat the amount we had done earlier in the season. We left the pool looking forward to completing the biathlon the coming morning.
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Junior Mike Brady's version:Daybreak, Wednesday, January 11th. We awake to a calm Florida morning though we all know that that it is just the calm before the storm that is the Ocean Swim. A majority of Panthers took the challenge of taking on the Atlantic in all of her glory. She fought back with large waves jostling those like Nathan Welchlin and Ryan Finke.
After the Panthers had conquered the great Atlantic, mother nature frowned upon us with an overcast day, though as we all know you get the best bronze on with overcast UV rays so the joke's on her.
Later that day, and with only four practices to go, the Panthers went to Pine Crest high school with an air of mystery and wonder on what the coaching staff would comprise for another day of guts and glory.
The practice: an hour of dryland and an hour of swim. The men started off with a short warm up and then a stand up set that both tested physical and, more importantly, mental toughness. The freestyle men dominated six 50’s while the ironmen of distance tackled six 100’s.
Then the men took on a classic Panther test set: two minutes of push ups and sit ups, followed by one minute of push ups and sit ups and then finally a max pull up. Every press of the earth and crunch of the abs meant we were one step closer to a "3-peat" as the Panther men left one of the nicest looking high schools in Florida.
One day left….get ready, Cleveland ;)
