Bakersfield

The third and final meet of this training trip was the CSU Bakersfield. It was against some very good schools. Two of them were DIV 1 (Bakersfield and LMU) and the other was San Diego one of the best Div 2 schools in the nation. You could tell it was the end of the training trip by everyone's times, but it was good to see how we stack up against some tough competition.

It kind of felt like swimming in a prison though. The pool is located in the middle of a field and they are going through a drought to there is dead grass. There is also barb wire around the fence. kind of creepy...

Get amongst it

Theres always stuff happening in a city. A few mornings ago we had a wee detour on the way to morning practice because there was a hit and run at 4.15 that morning. It was right outside the gate to the university where we train so we had to drive around for like 20 minutes trying to find a way in.

http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2014/01/09/woman-wanted-for-hit-and-run-near-lmu/

The other thing was the skywriting. Just a few hours earlier the star in the Transformer movies Shia Labeouf had announced his retirement in a tweet and hash tagged the phrase Stop creating. There were planes right above us at the beach spelling out in the sky #stopcreating

Like I said, Theres always stuff happening in a city.

Relay Meet

The second meet of the trip was a relay only meet. We were competing against LMU and Pepperdine in no individual events, just relays. The NCAA format we swum had 9 events including the usual 400 medley (1 person swims 100 back the next swims brs etc) and 800 free (each swims 200 free). But there were some different ones including 3x100 fly, a 500 free (first swimmer swims 50, the next swims 100, then 150 then 200) and another 400 medley but each person swims a 100 I.M. As a team we won 3/9 events which wasn't enough to come away with a win. It was fun when we did a combined relay at the end with two girls from each of the three teams.

Venice beach sunset

This is literally out the back door of our apartments. 

Quad Meet

First meet back of the season and the Nanooks bring home the W. It counts as three wins because we raced and beat three other teams (fresno pacific, biola and pomona pitzer colleges). We are now 5-2 for the season. It was good to swim outdoors again, but the pool used salt instead of cholrine. And unlike in New Zealand everyone seems to be getting a tan, not sunburnt. Not me, I'm still white as a ghost.

As a team we had 7 indiviudal wins and some top three relay finishes. I won the 500 and was second in the 1000 free. 

On wednesday we are racing in a relay only meet. Its againest pepperdine and LMU who we have trained alongside a few times this week. 

Till then I'm going to soak up some rays while I can.

2014

A beautiful first day of the year here. We had training in the morning and then walked down to the Santa Monica pier in the afternoon.

A nice walk down the board walk of Venice beach.

Made it to So cal

Or Southern California for those of you not familiar with local lingo. Flying from SF to LA is kind of an Auckland to PN flight, up then back down.

LA is a big place, here is an example.

We are staying at some little condos about 200m from a beach. I wonder if there will be anything to do in between trainings? Hmmmm

This is the pool we're training in. Outside and 25y by 50m. Rumour is we get to train long course later in the week. I'm pretty excited for that!