Sweet Briar College: 2012 Training Trip Blog - Day 7, 8, and 9

by Josh Huger (MrUtopia)

Sweet Briar College: 2012 Training Trip Blog - Day Six

SBC's Emily Jones will provide us with daily updates on the Vixens

Day 7, 8, and 9:

So I know it’s been a few days, and I mostly blame it on the poor internet connection in this hotel.  But we’ve also been super busy; let me explain why: In case you are not any of our “friends” on Facebook or “following” us on Twitter, we went to Disney World on Day 8!  We went to the place where dreams come true and college aged women can act like little princesses for the day!

But first, we had two practices on Day 7, just like normal.  Tuesday morning we had our friendly competition with Fairmont’s teams, creatively called “The Challenge for the Challenged”.  Basically, we were put into seven rounds of seven relays; each time the teams were different.  We raced relays such as 4x50 free, a medley relay, a crescendo relay, a kickboard relay, the “bobbin” relay (the pool has 24 lanes; we had to swim length wise and pop up in every lane. If you missed a lane, your team was disqualified.)  Since each relay was different, every person in the relay got points when the relay placed 1st, 2nd, or 3rd.  The person with the most points in the end overall is the winner.  The overall winner was David (from Fairmont).  The winner from Sweet Briar was Ronni.  Great swims guys!
After this little meet, our teams met separately to discuss some very important upcoming events.  Fairmont was heading to Daytona Beach later that day.  Coach Jason, however, gave us the new of our lives (and probably the best birthday announcement Dani had ever received on her 21st birthday): WE’RE GOING TO DISNEY WORLD TOMORROW!!!!!!  You’d think a bunch of college women would be able to control themselves when hearing this news, but honestly, would you be able to contain your excitement?!?!?  With that announcement, we were also reminded that we had two more practices to blast through before heading to Orlando.

In the afternoon on Day 7, we were split into two groups for the main set: Sprint/stroke and distance.  The first group swam 6x300 sprint on 5 minutes.  They were super impressive with their turns, push offs, and finishes.  The distance group swam the following set: 100, 100 200, 100 200 300, 100 200 300 400, 100 200 300, 100 200, and finally a 100, all on a 1 minute 25 second interval.  It was a huge chunk of yardage, but the group descended each swim like they were racing each distance.

After packing for Disney World and barely sleeping due to excitement, Day 8 rolled around and we headed to the only practice of the day.  After a 1000 warm up and a few 100s of drills and a short sprint set, Coach Jason told us to get out and get ready, basically to get an early start towards Orlando to avoid traffic.  We knew we definitely needed to swim before heading to the park, but if you’ve ever been to a theme park before, you know it is basically a work out just to walk around!  Tennis shoes were on, cameras/smart phones were out, and the swim team from Sweet Briar College took over Disney World for the day!  We took over 300 pictures, met some amazing characters, danced in a parade, felt the magic during the fireworks, and soooo much more.

One the morning of Day 9 we swam a bit of a recovery practice.  It consisted of lots of drilling, sprints from the block, and kicking.  We’re pretty sure our coaches understood how exhausted we were from the amazing previous day, and though we were ready to work, we saved the extra challenging sets for the afternoon.  

Speaking of the afternoon, we definitely picked up the volume and the intensity in the afternoon on Day 9.  After 5x200s for warm up, we swam 10x100s alternating IM’s and any drills that we specifically wanted to work on.  We did a quick main sprint set of 12x25s, odds from a push and evens from the blocks.  For the main set, we split again into distance and sprint/stroke groups.  Distance swam a 300, 250, 200, 150, and a 100, with the last 100 of each one sprint, two times through the whole set.  The sprint/stroke swam the following set six times through: 25 fast, 50 easy, 75 fast, and a 50 easy.  Every two times through they switched up strokes.   We finished practice with 6x125s kick and 1x100 fats kick, then a cool down.

The team went to CiCi’s again for dinner and cleared out the buffet!  Here’s an update for the swimming world: Ryan (from Fairmont) swam a 300 with one arm today!  He’s making progress!  Check back tomorrow after we tell the team a surprise after our morning abdominal set ;)

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