Wednesday, December 26th three team mates and I packed up (very tightly) into my Honda Civic and headed from Nova Scotia back to Fredericton to meet up with our coach begin our adventure to Portland Maine, and then onto Nassau, Bahamas for training camp.
This was my fifth time going to camp as a part of the UNB Varsity Reds Swim Team. 3 times to Florida, one to Puerto Rico and now Bahamas.
Some of our team mates had some crazy stories about getting there. Ian Smith, one of our 1st year male swimmers had one of the funnier stories. Ian was one of the team mates that drove from Halifax to Fredericton with me. We all made it to Portland together but he had a later flight than ours. It was a typical cold, snowy day on the 27th when we were supposed to fly out. All of us said farewell to Ian and took off on time at 9 am. For Ian it was a little different - his first flight to Philadelphia was cancelled. Ian, being the dedicated and outgoing individual that he is, met a friend at the airport. He then proceeded to travel in a car with this person who was supposed to be on that flight to Philadelphia. He managed to make his connection flight. He plans to send his new friend some good ol Canadian maple syrup to say thanks. I am sure this first training camp experience is one that he will always remember.
We all arrived at different times and began training on December 28th. When we go to training camp it is by no means a vacation - 2 two hour in the water practices a day, plus good ol Trevor dryland. This year in 6 days we swam between 71 and 77 km plus a special practice on our last day.
We break up into sprinters, mid distance and distance groups at camp to assure that we are doing the training that will best help us with our best events. One set that defines our team was our last set of 2012. December 31st 2012 we did the 100x100 set. We did this set in a small cold pool and everyone really stepped up and excelled during this swim. Each swimmer had so many things to be proud of during this training camp I could never begin to explain them all.
It is hard to believe that it was a week ago we did our last practice in Bahamas. The sun was rising and the air was warm for our 7:30 am practice in the ocean. We would swim along the buoys and run back along the beach. Little did we know of the manta rays, crabs and fish we were along side. We were all just doing what we loved to do at the same time - swim. It was a peaceful end to an intensive week of training.
Friendships were strengthened, team spirit may be the strongest I have seen. This camp defined what it is to be a VRED. Strong, dedicated, determined and proud.
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