Salt water swim

The day started early with a morning practice at six in the morning. The day started off a little bit roughly as I woke up with a headache and an emerging cough…signals of a developing sickness. Ignoring these symptoms, I began the trek towards practice. The light rain during my walk to practice woke me up and made me feel a bit more refreshed.

                  This morning practice was a bit different from previous ones. Instead of splitting into groups based on stroke or distance like we usually did, today we split into groups of guys and girls. The practice focused on aspects of changing pace and underwater work. We finished off the practice with some relays that divided the boys into two groups starting off at opposite ends of the pool with the goal being to catch up to the other team. We had to cut the relay short as the men’s team was due in the University of Hawaii weight room for our lift session. The lift session was enjoyable and productive as everybody in the room continued to work hard to achieve their goals.

                  We had no afternoon practice that day, so instead the entire team traveled to Lanikai Beach Park for an ocean swim practice. There we were met by a couple Dartmouth alumni that helped us pick the course for our swim. To be honest, I was not extremely excited for this ocean swim as I was not a big fan of open water swimming but as soon as my teammates and I all jumped in together I realized that there was nothing to be worried about and I was able to relax and enjoy the experience of the swim. We originally planned to swim to a close island; however, the waves proved to be a little too large for the swim to continue, so Coach Jim altered the course to a more favorable area. The swim lasted for roughly a half hour and afterwards people stayed by and took pictures or just relaxed and soaked up the beach environment.

                  After the ocean swim, a few of us decided to grab some smoothies, so we hopped into the vans and drove to a local juice store called Lanikai Juice. This juice place happened to be pretty famous as they had a brief stint on the Oprah show and were praised for the usage of only fruits in their smoothies. The portions that they had were extremely large and their smoothies were the best that I have ever had. After enjoying our refreshments decided to head back to the hotel to enjoy some relaxation as we knew that we had another day of hard training ahead of us.

Tony Shen ’18