Jan. 16, 2008
Florida Photo Gallery
Champaign, Ill. -
The Illinois swimming and diving team began a new semester of classes on Monday. They may have a hard time readjusting to the frigid temperatures on their walks to class after spending ten days in sunny Boca Raton, Fla., over break. Freshmen Corey Kasten, Meghan Mason and Ann Miller recorded their first training trip experiences for fightingillini.com. The team will use its preparation from Florida on Saturday, Jan. 19,as the Illini travel to Iowa City to take on the Hawkeyes in a dual meet.
Thursday 12/27/07 - Corey
Today was a travel day. The team met in Bloomington and it seemed as if barely any time had passed since I'd last seen everyone. Although it was 4:45 a.m., many members of the team were quite lively and excited for the trip. The flights went smoothly and we arrived in Fort Lauderdale as expected. We swam after we settled into the hotel. Most of us felt kind of bad in the water, but I think it was because we hadn't slept much and sat on an airplane all day. I was super impressed with the pool and surrounding area. Everything is so beautiful! I'm looking forward to the rest of the week!
Friday 12/28/07 - Ann
We got to sleep in until 9:30 a.m. because that's when the hotel breakfast ended. We left for the pool at 10:15 and immediately hit the weight room. Lifting was like normal until coach added a segment to it that was really difficult. We did a power series that we were told would make us grow and help our muscles recover better. I do know that it made me sore for the rest of the day. The one mistake I made during this practice was not bringing enough water. After weights we went to the pool to practice. I was done with all of my water a fourth of the way through the workout because the pool uses a salt water system instead of chlorine, so it made my mouth extremely dry and I became even more dehydrated. At lunch, I think I drank about a gallon of water and then another quart before the second practice. We went shopping after lunch and were given 45 dollars to spend for the rest of the lunches on the trip. All the upperclassmen were telling me to save as much as possible. I thought that my bill of $25 was pretty good, until I got in the car and heard the other girls saying they only spent 9 or 12 dollars. I'm impressed. They'll have to tell me their secret next year. We practiced again from 8-10 p.m. It sounds tough practicing so late, but it's what we're used to at home and it was actually pretty peaceful. After practice, we went back to the hotel and played cards and talked around the pool.
Saturday 12/29/07 - Meghan
Well...the soreness has set in. I woke up this morning wondering if my legs would be able to get me out of bed. I stared at the ceiling and waited until I got the motivation to get up and go eat breakfast. Once I was up, my two roommates, Marissa Clapp and Amy Forsberg, and I headed down for breakfast and we each got our usual. After that, we came back up and took a little nap again before practice...napping is a common thing in our room. We headed to the pool at 10:40 a.m. and swam until about 2:00p.m. After practice, we had to eat and try to recover before we headed back to the pool at 3:30. It was a quick turn around, but we all did a really nice job of dealing with it and the day was a lot of fun.
Sunday 12/30/07 - Corey
Today was a nice day because we go to go to the beach! The weather has been wonderful. We had an early morning practice at 7:45 then weights right after. Our warmup was super fast, but other than that practice wasn't too bad. I was really sore and weights were pretty difficult, but it was okay because I knew that we were going to the beach afterward. There were some nice big waves at the beach, which made it fun. We napped after going to the beach and were back at the pool for a nice fins and paddles set. The sprint group really worked well together tonight, which made practice a lot more fun. After practice we had a delicious chicken marsala dinner and the hotel people brought us some cookies fresh out of the oven. Now, we have all night to chill out! Yay!
Monday 12/31/07 - Meghan
Our first training trip meet was today! That means we did not have as much practice and were able to do what we love to do... RACE. We went against some other teams who were down to train. University of Maryland-Baltimore County was there as well as North Carolina State. As a team, we did a great job of supporting each other and racing hard despite our massive amount of fatigue. Ali Keehn had an amazing meet today. She had some lifetime bests and really went out there and gave it her all. It's great to see someone succeed in this type of situation. As a special treat, we got to see a world-class sprinter, Cullen Jones, who previously competed for North Carolina State. Being the creeper I am, I had to go get a picture. I can't pass up an opportunity like that up. When we got back to the hotel, we had an amazing team activity that had us all laughing. Each of us on the team picked out a name from a hat. In front of the team, we then acted out something that corresponded with that person...like charades. After the team guessed who we were acting out, the person who did the acting said something nice about that person. It was a great activity and everyone had a lot of fun. Since it was New Years Eve, we were not quite done with the night. Knowing we had the next day off, many of us stayed up until midnight just hanging out in the hotel. At midnight, we all went down to the lobby of the hotel and watched the ball drop on the big screen TV. We ate Chupa Chup suckers, which were suckers that the hotel had at the front desk. They were a team favorite! We again enjoyed each other's company and had fun laughing and hanging out together!
Tuesday 1/1/08 - Ann
Today was New Year's Day, but more exciting is the fact that it is our day off! We were able to sleep in as late as we wanted, so I slept in until about 9:00. That doesn't sound late to most college students but for us, that's about 3 to 4 hours more than we usually do. I went down for breakfast and ate some of the more delicious things the hotel had to offer for breakfast since I didn't have to swim all day. I particularly enjoyed the chocolate chip muffin because it went great with my coffee. I went back up to the room to change into my bathing suit. Not my practice suit though, my bikini! We only went to the beach for an hour and a half because the weather was not cooperating. It was kind of cold and the sun wasn't as bright as it has been the other days. We went back to the hotel and some of the girls went to the mall. I slept because I was so tired. At 4:00 p.m. we all left the hotel and drove to Ft. Lauderdale. Coach Steve booked us two rooms in the Hard Rock Cafe where we could watch the Rose Bowl on two big screen TVs and about 20 smaller TVs. He also arranged for us to have a buffet dinner. The game was a little disappointing, but it was still fun to watch the Illini play at such a prestigious game. We cheered for them the whole time. After the game we went back to the hotel and I went to sleep.
Wednesday 1/2/08 - Meghan
Today we were back into our normal routine. We headed to the pool in the morning for another day of rigorous training. In the weight room, Coach Sue made up a new series for us to try that is supposed to help our growth hormone release more chemicals as we sleep. We all have been doing a great job with it, but it sure is taxing on the body. We were all dripping sweat by the time we were done with it. Even though it is probably one of our most challenging things we do outside of the pool, it will be so beneficial in the long run. This is the time of year where we are supposed to work as hard as possible so that we can see great results at the end. Swimming is still getting harder and we are all trying our best to keep up the great work at practice.
Thursday 1/3/08 - Corey
This morning, we went to the pool to do our scheduled dryland before practice and found that no one had swam in the pool yet. This was due to the record low temperatures of the previous night. The one team that tried to swim got out in less than 45 minutes. Instead of practicing, because the water temperature was only 70 degrees and way too cold, we did a little extra dryland. Then we got some pizza for lunch and went to see movies! I saw Charlie Wilson's War, while others saw Juno, National Treasure and Walk Hard. I'd already seen Juno, so I opted for a different choice. We ate dinner a little later and then watched the Illinois vs. Ohio State basketball game. Overall, it was really nice to have the day off!
Friday 1/4/08 - Corey
TGIF! Well, the only reason I know that its Friday is because I'm keeping this little journal. Our schedule is pretty much the same for the remainder of the trip, so it's easy to lose track of what day it is. All in all, today wasn't horrible, but the day did seem very long- like four days in one. We extended our weights session and did three rounds of growth hormone training this morning which was pretty difficult. Long course practice wasn't too bad, except that it was long course. After practice, we went to a pizza place again for lunch and then hung out and napped until our delicious pasta dinner before evening practice. Gina (our trainer) rubbed out my back and heated it before practice. She has been taking care of a lot of us this trip. I think I used my back too much lifting on Wednesday because it was really sore yesterday, too. It feels a little better already, so I'll just have to keep taking care of it by icing. We'll see what tomorrow brings! Last day of real training because there's a meet Sunday! Woo!
Saturday 1/5/08 - Ann
Today I woke up and went to breakfast like usual. We went to the pool at 10:40 a.m. to do dryland. Now that we're done with weights for the week, dryland doesn't seem as bad. We got into the water and started our warmup. When I was waiting at the wall I was surprisingly attacked by another swimmer who dunked me under. I thought it was Cece Marizu going crazy because she was behind me in the lane, but to my astonishment it was our coach Sue! She got her suit on and was swimming around. It was funny seeing my coach in the water. The set that morning was really hard and I was hoping that the night's set wouldn't be that bad. We returned to the pool at night and the set was hard. It was a bunch of sprints from the blocks and I had to do fly. I got through it by remembering that it was that last set of the trip. After we were done with the set, all of the freshmen got out and did the traditional "freshmen relay." Basically, each freshman did a 50 free and all six of us combined had to break a goal time of 2:34 that coach Sue set for us. This year we broke the goal time by two seconds. It was fun and I was proud that our freshman class could survive such a difficult trip. We put the covers on the pool and then hit the hot tub to celebrate the (almost) end of training trip and did a cheer and took some pictures.
Sunday 1/6/08 - Meghan
Today was our last day of the trip. Lucky for us, it was a relay meet day! Instead of doing individual events, we all got to participate in relay events which were a lot of fun! We set three new meet records. It was an absolutely great way to end our last day at the pool! Tonight was also super fun because we did another team activity. We were split up into teams and had to do certain competitions. Props to the following for winning their part of the competition: Kelly Smithwick-bird calling, Meg Bradley- Name that song, Kyla Bachtell-bubble gum blowing, and Ann Miller-Dance off!! Despite my dearest effort to dance my heart out, judge coach Sue Novitsky just did not think I had style in my part of the competition...bummer... something to work on for next year!!!! Overall the trip had many elements. Don't get me wrong, the trip was hard work, but having our team be as close as it is really helped things go by fast. We had a lot of fun and had some great work put in as we head back for the second part of our season...BIG TENS HERE WE COME!!!! GO ILLINI!
The Illini are set to travel to Iowa City, Iowa for a dual meet against the Hawkeyes on Saturday, Jan. 19. Competition is set to begin at noon and a full recap will be available on fightingillini.com following the meet.
