Diary

This completes my daily bits from Tenerife. I’m sitting at the airport Tenerife North while I start writing this last entry. Today wasn’t our lucky day. Our flight got delayed by about an hour and a half and it looks like back home the ground personnel is on strike and there’s about a two our wait at the baggage reclaim.

I did finally get the videos from both of my flume channel swims and will try to post a short sample of me swimming fly later this week. Before leaving the hotel this morning I sat down with my coach and watch all of them again. I think we might have found something that will help me to improve a lot and enhance my swimming.

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“Last” day in Tenerife … it was a busy one! Not only did we have two pool and one gym session on the program but I also planned to meet up with Cassandra and her family. Today also marked the day where I didn’t have to do  an additional set or some additional stroke work at the end of workout after almost two weeks. It almost felt weird finishing up with the team and just doing the regular workout.

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Although this is the entry for December 31st, as I’m sitting here on the coach writing it’s already 2010, so Happy New Year! May the lanes be plenty and all the water good and fast!

After the morning workout we had another flume channel session on the program to be able to compare our swim with last week’s tapes. But first we had to earn to swim the channel as we had a 6x800m to go through. Well, at least workout went over quick this way and with all the easy and loosen swimming between and after the flume we did a total of 9300 meters this morning.

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Wednesday’s are Spa days. But first we had to go through 2 pool and one gym session. The weather is still nice but there’s a pretty chilly breeze coming in from the Atlantic Ocean. Morning workout wasn’t that hard but we did some “warm-up” for the main set of fast 50’s in the afternoon. I’m also starting to think about changing my main stroke to something other than fly … it might just be me but there are way too many fly sets in practice lately.

Our afternoon started with a max and power weight session. Later we followed up with some fast 50’s in the pool. We were working quite a lot on DPS (distance per stroke) on the fast swimming parts lately and I’m getting to a point where I’m able to hold good splits with a low stroke count. Together with the tweaks we were able to do after the first flume channel session my fly starts to feel well again.

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Quite a lazy day. We started our daily routine in the morning but with the rumors confirmed we would not have to go back to the pool in the afternoon today. After a rough day yesterday this morning was mainly just swimming. And I finally got to have my massage as well after the morning workout.

There’s really not much to tell today. Swimming 7000m meters in the  morning without getting too much hurt (aside from the pain that is there since day one) and a massage after practice … sounds good to me.

After lunch I tried to get some school work done but the training camp and “holiday” feeling didn’t help to get done a bunch. But at least I tried to be a good student.

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After a hard day yesterday we did get some more easy swimming this morning with just some more intense kicking mixed in. In the morning the sun was still shinning and we went the full 8000 meters with ease. Before the afternoon session we heard a rumor that tomorrow afternoon will be off, so we got a little excited.

(Un)fortunately, the rumor got confirmed and we had to get to work during the afternoon session. Nothing like some serious pace work … even better if you get to do same set in fly as all the freestylers on your team. Although, I still felt the fatigue of the last week I managed to get through with the fly work in good style.

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Sunday but we still did doubles today. And to add to it, the workouts were pretty hard as well. The good news … the weather is finally set on sunshine from the morning hours.

One part of the morning session that we don’t really like is the 15 minutes “dryland” warm-up before the swimming. We already have to “climb” up to the pool early in the morning but once we get there it all really starts. Not that were not awake by the time we get to the pool but the routine our coach set up is pretty demanding and not so much fun early in the morning.

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Back in the water after our day off yesterday and back to the usual 7 am breakfast wake up. All was a little bit easier tough as for the first time we had a beautiful day here in Tenerife. Waking up and swimming under the warm sun already in the morning is why we came here. I was supposed to have a massage after the morning session and thus had to work a little harder than my team mates in the morning.

Unfortunately, the guy never showed up and so I went ahead with another quality stretching session with ocean view instead. And of course without the massage I was back working a hard set in the afternoon again with my team mates.

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What a great day … it was our 1st day off after eight pool and two gym sessions. We did have a couple good ideas of what we wanted to do but it all changed that same day in the morning. After we all slept in a little longer for once and had our breakfast we tried to figure out what to do. The initial plan was to visit the “Monkey Park” in the morning and moving on to the “Siam Park” in the afternoon.

We did investigate the lady at the reception desk about all the different options and finally decided to go straight to the “Siam Park“. Apparently, the animals in the “Monkey Park” are held in small cages and aren’t happy at all. The lady told us to go and visit another animal park but this one was too far away since we don’t have a car at our disposal.

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