Training Trip -- New Year 2013

Check out this great view from my balcony.

 



Alex: festive, as usual!

Here's a shot from our first night. 

 

We had a fun day yesterday.  Training in the morning and Yoga/Meditation in the afternoon -- & there was some volleyball being played pretty much all day otherwise.  We had a pizza for dinner, and although many attepted to ring in the New Year awake, we had quite a few people hit the sack prior to 2013.

 

Training was good this morning.  We continue to attempt some different styles of trianing to spruce up the training trip.  This morning was split into a women practice and a men's practice, and I thought it went well.

 

Currently the athletes are napping/resting, and gearing up for some beach Yoga/Meditation today, and some dryland/training this evening. 

 

For dinner, it's looking like a spaghetti night tonight!

Training Trip -- Training, Day 2 and 3

We have had some good practices so far on our trip to the Keys.  Here are a few tidbits:

 

Yesterday (Day 2) we had our second practice at 6pm.  This was the Warmup Set:

 

4x:

200 Free (3)

150 Kick-Swim (3)

100 Back (140)

50 Drill - 3 Fly Strokes+3Breast Strokes (1)

 

I asked the athletes to descend the 200s free during the warmup.  The goal was to have our top 3 men average 215 or better on the last 3 rounds, and either our top 2 women average 222 or better, our top 3 women average 225 or better, or our top 4 women average 227 or better.

 

We accomplished the goals, with 4 men averaging 212s, and 2 women averaging 221s.  Eric posted our top male time (210) and Avery posted our top female time (217).  The four men who averaged the fastest were Eric (211 average), Aidan (211 average), Shawn (213 average), and Liam (212 average).  On the women's side: Elise went 223-220-221 on her last 3 and Avery went 224, 221, 217 on her last 3).  We had a lot of 225-230 times from athletes who have best times of 4:45-5:00 in the 400 free, so I was pleased with this set. 

 

It's awesome what this group can do when given a goal that enables them to shorten a set later in the practice.  By accomplishing this task, our final 'written set' of 7x200 was reduced to 7x150. 

 

After a pre-set and a Main Set of 30x50 -- I determined that we had done enough to warrent 7x50 warmdown.  So because of the perfromance of the group, we ended up with 1150meters less than we would have had otherwise.

 

This morning we had the post-grads back in action (they had the afternoon off on Saturday).  They had a nice set of 5x200 Kick on descending intervals.  Erika, Ksen, and Lisa are all kicking at speeds that are close to or better than they've ever kicked on this set -- and we've done significantly less LCM kicking to this point in the season....so I think we're on the right track.  We finished with some pulling and a 1500 aerobic freestyle set.

 

The HS/MS athletes did a set of 8x400 (6).  The odds were Free IM and evens were Free.  The idea was to earn some rest on the Free IM, and descend the Free.  Aidan led the way with some great training 400s: 428, 425.9, 425.0 on the last 3.  Eric was 437-440s;  Liam was 450+ on 3 but went 441 on the end; Shawn and Conner were 450+ and 5min+ on the first 3 but went 449 on the end.  We have to get more guys down in the 420 range!!!  I wasn't pleased the overall outcome on the guys side as a whole, but we'll get there.  On the girls side, we had some really good work from a few girls (it was tough for many to just make the Free IM interval), and we ended up getting 4 girls under 5:10 on the end (Elise, Nora (who did it twice), Karen, and Olivia).  Next step is sub 5 Minutes with these girls....who, like the guys are fully capable. 

 

Sometimes I think we feel like the endurance sets are really long and hard and we're not able to really get after them.  We seem to be better with the shorter stuff.  This has got to change!!

 

This evening we did a set of 100s:  8 rounds of 100 Fast + 100 easy on (4) {2 min per 100}.  I gave everyone a goal time and told the athletes that if they could get the time I would let them finish after 4 rounds of the set.  We had four people (Aidan, Avery, Graham, and Libbie) finished after 4 rounds, then Rip got it done after 5 rounds.  Everyone else kept going....until round 7.  I gave four athletes a goal for one 100, and the idea was that if we got 2 out of 4 we would be done with the set (skipping round 7 and 8 for everyone else. 

 

Shawn's goal was 1:00.5 (he did 58.5)

Eric's goal was 101+ (he did 101.4)

Conner's goal was 103+ (he did 102.3)

Karen's goal (Backstroke) was 1:10 (she did 1:10.3)

 

Some of our top performances of the day:

Aidan was 59-58 for his four freestyles.

Erika was 102-103 a bunch of times for freestyle.

Avery was 103 x3, 104 x1 for her four freestyles.

Ksen was 117-118-118 for her top 3 breaststrokes.

Tomorrow we have a single AM practice and then a dryland/meditation routine in the afternoon.  We will have the evening off, which will allow us to have a pizza night, and get a good night's sleep for the next morning!

Food Photos from Day 2 and Day 3

Here are some photos from our meals over the last few days.  It has been really tasty!  Stay tuned for further posts about our practices, etc.....

 

 

 

Lasagna Night on Day 2.  Thanks to our Post Grads (Ksen, Lisa, and Erika) for their help with organization and cooking....and the rest of the women's team for their contribution.  Next time it's the guy's turn!

Salad a la Ksen!

Day 3 Meatball Sub night

Thanks to Karen and Tim Lyster for making Meatball subs for us tonight!

 

Dudes on the porch

 

Training Trip Day Two

Day number two of of training trip is underway.  It's 11:30am, and already we have had an action-packed day. 

 

We started with a 6am practice.  Our men did 6500 Meters, and our Women did 6000.  Our main exercise was 40x50 Free on (40) for Men, and 36x50 on (45) for Women.  It went pretty well.  I've got to say, we've never done that set before.  I don't think it was very hard, but certainly the athletes couldn't get away with swimming slow -- due to the shorter rest intervals.  Our men were averaging between 35 and 32 seconds, and our women were between 38 and 34.  Eric Ordaz had decent pulling set before the main series: 4x300 (410) with evens Negative Split (he did 3:19, 3:15 -- both Negative Split).

 

My hope is that we can swim this sort of pace on a set of 100s later in the week.

 

Our postgrads swam a recovery-style workout.  We started the trip (yesterday) with a double, and we are looking at a few doubles coming up....and the post-grad needs are certainly different than the needs of our HS-aged atheltes....so we took it easy today in the pool, and will take the afternoon off today.  Tomorrow we are back to work, and we'll be fresh!

 

We had a big shopping trip today, where each athlete had the chance to buy food for the week (they managed to buy a volleyball as well!).  Next up, we head back to the pool area (Founder's Park), where we will work on our dryland for an hour.  Nap/Free time will follow, and then we will get back to the pool for our 6pm practice.

 

Tonight is Lasangna night!  Thanks to all of our parents who have made the food that we have prepared -- we will be eating our share of it tonight.  I have assigned a few "food captains" for the evening, and they are currently organizing the food for the whole team.

 

Thanks for checking in!  More to come later....

 

 

We are here!

We are here!  After a 3 hour 20 minute drive, T2 Aquatics Seniors have arrived in Islamorada.  We had a quick shopping trip, followed by training at the Founder's Park Pool.  Photos of the pool will be posted at some point soon.  The pool is nice, and the water temp is much warmer than it was two years ago.

After our training session, we had our first dinner "out" at Bentley's Restaurant, and made it back to the hotel by 10pm.  It was a LONG day. 

Aside from the fact that our training sessions in the afternoons are very late most days (6-8pm), leading into an early morning (6-8am) -- all is setting up nicely.  ....and although the training times could be better, we like having an opportunity to deal with adversity.  This is our chance!  You know when else you have these sorts of hours, athletically-speaking?  At the Olympics, Olympic Trials, World Championships....pretty much any International Meet.  You don't get back to your hotel/village room until very late after taking a bus and eating in a dining hall at 9:30pm.  It's just the way it goes.  This trip will prepare us for the true Olympic Experience given our early to rise/late to bed options.

Certainly, it will make for some needed nap time during the middle of the day as well. 

Tomorrow we have two training sessions, and dinner "in".  I plan to assign a group of athletes the task of making dinner for the entire group....and we will "dig in" as a team.

More to come at different points during the week, so check back.