Sweet Briar College: 2012 Training Trip Blog - Day 10

by Josh Huger (MrUtopia)

Sweet Briar College: 2012 Training Trip Blog - Day Ten

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

Day 10:

It’s Day 10, aka January 13, 2012.  A Fairmont swimmer celebrates his 19^th birthday and our coaches announce a surprise for us: as long as we crush the morning practice we can have the afternoon off to do as we please.  With that deal in mind, we dove in knowing we were going to do the work to get the time off!

We started off warm up with a straight 1000 yards broken into a 400 swim, 300 50 drill/50 kick, 200 swim, and a 100 IM or best stroke.  For our first main set we broke out our short fins for 10x200 focusing on streamlines off of every wall.  As mentioned before, short fins force you to use your legs more in order to avoid sinking.  The focus on the streamlines is part of our perfect-the-small-things philosophy that our team has been focusing on this year.  It was an intense amount of yardage in such as small time, but everyone swam the set to the coaches’ satisfaction.

Putting our fins away, our next set was 12x25s swimming any drill in any stroke that you personally think you needed to work on.  Catch and release is always a popular choice for both backstroke and freestyle.  Next came 10x25s fast kick, again focusing on tight streamlines, quick push offs, and fast breakout kicks.

For our second main set of the morning/day we split into our usual distance and sprint/stroke groups.  The distance crew hopped to the other side of the pool so each swimmer could have their own lane, mainly to focus on swimming in the middle of the lane, race style.  The set was 5x100s pace, a 500 race, 10x50s quicker pace, and another 500 race.  The 5 people swimming this distance set were extremely consistent and proud of their times.  The sprint/stroke group swam 6x200s, broken lactate set style into 75-50-75, all sprint. The coaches picked strokes for each swimmer on the odds and the evens were freestyle.

After each group finished their sets, we rejoined together for 12 more 25s of drill, swimming it the same as before.  Finally, the team spread out into 8 lanes and climbed out behind the blocks.  Though it was cold, we swam our hardest for a lactate set 4 times through, broken 100s 25-50-25.  Every single lap was a sprint.  The odds were best non freestyle stroke and the evens were choice.  After a 200 or more of a cool down, we were done for the day.

The coaches took most of the team to the Orlando Prime Outlets for a few hours of wonderful inexpensive shopping.  We are looking forward to our last day of our 2012 Training Trip.  We have two practices tomorrow (Saturday) and then it’s time to pack again!  Check in tomorrow for more updates!

See more of Emily's posts here