On Car-Controlling and Coldness

January 6th-7th, 2010: Training Trip Days 0 – 1

I’ve thought to myself about what I’m going to do with this blog. On one hand, I don’t want to keep people from reading this by not focusing on the most important details of the training trip experience. On the other hand, it’s not really fun to rewrite the same stories over and over again. Currently I’m thinking of compromising by linking to last year’s blog, then expanding on details that are new for this year’s training trip.

Two nights ago, when we landed at the Ft. Lauderdale airport, I quickly got to experience the first of these new details: driving.

Every year for training trip, the team rents a fleet of minivans (we rented 7) to take the team from the airport to the hotel, from the hotel to the pool and back, and from the hotel to the grocery store and other vitally important places (like the ultra-tourist trap known as Shell World). Since we only have three coaches with us in Florida, the rest of the minivans have to be driven by swimmers who are legally able to rent cars: those 21 or older. Technically I could have driven last year, but we had enough senior swimmers. This year, however, my services as a driver were definitely required.

In no time whatever, I was handed the keys to a silver Kia Sedona, given a map, and told to drive out the near-100 miles from the airport to our hotel in Tavernier on Key Largo. Mark Fino suggested that we would stay together as a caravan, but those plans fell apart almost immediately as we hit Ft. Lauderdale’s busy traffic.

There is something terrifying about driving a car that you are still getting to learn on a highway you’ve never driven before following directions to a place that, even though you’ve been there before, this is the first time you actually have to worry about getting others there in one piece.

Thanks to the expert navigational help of my co-pilot, Money Mike Sabatka, we made it to the Ocean Point Suites without making a single wrong turn, safe and sound.

Ready to go to practice the next morning.

Just like last year, we’re swimming at the beautiful 50-meter long pool at Founder’s Park in Islamorada, Florida, the next town south of Tavernier. It’s an extremely nice pool, and all last year, we enjoyed the sun while doing our practices.

This year, things were a little different. It turns out that South Florida is having the coldest winter in seven years. And while we still got afternoon temperatures in the 70s, the mornings and evenings were decidedly colder.

I’m no stranger to swimming in the cold. At the beginning of each of my summer seasons, I would be told to jump into the pool at the Haymaker Swim and Racquet Club, despite the fact that it was only 60-odd degrees outside and the pool water, recently filled, was probably not much warmer. So while jumping in wasn’t fun at all, the overall experience wasn’t too terrible, and we did two reasonable practices yesterday.

So all in all, it was a successfully start to Florida. And it’s not like it could get any colder outside, right?

Right?

TO BE CONTINUED

Meters Traveled:
Distance: 9110
Sprint: 8400