On Situps, Strech Cords, and Shivering

January 8th-10th, 2010: Training Trip Days 2 – 3

You know that little ‘cold’ issue that I brought up in my last post? Well, it turns out that it’s not such a little issue after all.

The temperature of the air dropped to highs in the 40s and 50s over the weekend, and has only been recovering since then. This, however, is not the main problem.

I’d assume that pools in Florida, being mostly outdoors, would need good heaters. After all, outdoor pools need to be constantly regulated in case there are wild swings in temperature, and the cold of nights has more effects on outdoor pools than indoor ones. This, however, seems to not be the case with the pool in Founder’s Park, whose heater seemed to peak with a temperature of 69 degrees, which in layman’s terms is “way too cold to swim in”.

So since Friday, the day after we arrived, we have not been able to swim. What have we been doing instead? Drylands!

To those of you who ask, “what are drylands”, the answer is simple: workouts done outside the pool, dry (when you’re not soaked in rain or sweat) and on land.

Saturday morning, we ran out about 3/4ths of a mile to a park, enduring the cold winds and drizzle in order to do as many variations on situps, pushups, squats, jumps, and using stretch cords as Mark Fino could think of. We did the same thing Sunday afternoon, and this morning.

In a way, this is somewhat of a disappointment. After all, the purpose of a training trip is to train. And while drylands are good and important exercises, the most important exercise for a swimmer is, well… swimming. And for the past few days we’ve only done one drylands session a day, being cooped up into our hotel rooms (remember, it’s still cold outside) is beginning to get to us. Watching football games and movies is fun, but even for swimmers who are afraid of Florida workouts, sitting around and doing very little gets boring enough to wish that you were doing Fishburn right then and there. Well, maybe not that boring.

If only there was some sort of activity we could do, or some place we could go, to get rid of some of this monotony…

TO BE CONTINUED