Friday April 18, 2008
The Team was all present and accounted for Friday morning at four different airports around BC. We were all flying into Calgary to meet our bus for the drive to Lethbridge. The only problem was that the Vancouver-Calgary flight was cancelled. The group of 23 swimmers, coaches and our chaperone finally flew out two hours late. We all met in Calgary, handed out Team BC Shirts and Caps and loaded the bus.
We had a short Team meeting on the bus. I presented the basic itinerary and goals for the weekend. The swimming theme of the weekend was Stroke Count, Stroke Rating and Stroke Reliability in training. I introduced the staff and then we all sat back and watched “Unfiltered” a Michael Phelps, Ian Crocker documentary.
Because of the late flight, BC missed out on the “Sleep and Sleep needs” presentation by Shane Esau. We headed strait into the pool and swam the same 3700 m practice that Team Alberta had just finished. The session was fairly moderate but did include a Timed 400 K and 200 Free Pull. Results of these two tests are attached below.
We headed back to the Hotel for a Pasta Buffet. Curfew was at 9:30 pm.
Saturday April 19, 2008
Wake up was at 6:00 am and the Team was on the bus at 7:00 for a 2 and 1/2 hour morning swim. Our original itinerary was changed due to a lack of lane space. We switched the Saturday and Sunday morning plan to accommodate the video session with Ken and Graham Olson (RaceTek Systems). The coaches met Friday night to discuss the details around the initial warm up, the stroke warm ups and warm downs. Dave and I had already planned the main set content. We had a challenging training session.
This was followed by a snack and a second session with Shane Esau. The 1st topic this morning was a report on the Hydration Test that Shane had the swimmers do that morning. Only 4 of the 64 swimmers were adequately hydrated. The 2nd part of the presentation was on “Recovery and Regeneration.”
At the same time the Coaches met together and 4 coaches, 2 from each Province, gave 15 minute presentations on the topic of “Using Stroke Count and Stroke Rate in Training”.
The Team had lunch at the pool. Mike Brown attended the swimmers lunch and before signing autographs he gave a short presentation and answered many good questions. The Team really enjoyed his talk.
We headed back to the Hotel for a short rest before the meet. BC won the Men’s and the overall points but we were narrowly defeated in the Women’s. The results showed that we were fairly weak in the 400 Free, the 400 IM and the Backstroke events. We were strong in the Freestyle and Relays. Most swimmers swam in 8 events during the 3 and a half hour meet. It was a very successful competitive training session.
All the swimmers and staff from both Teams attended a buffet dinner, which was very good, but the room wasn’t adequate for our guest speaker, so we postponed Dave Johnson’s talk until Sunday morning and arrived back at the Hotel a little earlier than planned.
Sunday April 20, 2008
We were up at 6:30, packed, fed and on the bus at 7:30 for the final day of the trip. The team swam a 15 minute Warm up together, then were split into Men’s and Women’s groups. One group swam a long set of fifties and rotated through the under-water video set-up, while the other group swam a moderate mid-distance set. Then we switched groups and continued for another hour. Both sets maintained the theme of Stroke Count throughout the entire session.
Each swimmer was filmed for a mid pool 50, and then watched themselves on a large screen with Dave Johnson and a Team BC Coach. The swimmers were given specific instructions about their technique, then, with the help of a BC coach, they went to the deep end to work on that stroke correction, returning a few minutes later to be filmed a second time to see if they had made any progress.
The morning practice was followed by a snack and then we all listened to Dave’s presentation. Dave told the swimmers many stories abut famous international swimmers and the challenging experiences they had lived through where they were forced to persevere through emotional stress to achieve their goal. Everyone enjoyed the talk which was followed by Pizza for the road. Both Teams took off pretty quickly as there was a severe Snow storm and we were expecting a slow drive back to Calgary.
Overall, the logistics of the Camp itself may not have played out according to plan, but both teams’ staffs did a great job of adapting, and by being creative and flexible, the Camp/Competition was very successful.
The swimmers were co-operative, attentive and competed very well in a challenging situation.
Many Thanks to Gwen Jewell for Chaperoning the Team and taking care of everyone during the weekend. Swimmers can contact Gwen at kjgj@telus.net to thank her for her time
I would like to thank the Coaches for volunteering their time to coach the Team. They were very professional and their support of the Provincial Team is appreciated
Tom Rushton tom@winskilldolphins.org
Aaron Dahl aaron@crkw.ca
Xiaoping Lu gatorsswimclub@shaw.ca
Marc Tremblay swimcoachmt@gmail.com
Some resources from the weekend:
