Chasing Gold

02| to keg or not to keg

"Everybody listen up," Coach Jennings voice fills the pavilion, and we all quiet down.

We were all currently putting on our googles and settling in our assigned lanes while we waited for Jennings to come out of his office. The practice was supposed to start fifteen minutes ago, but Tanner our assistant coach, had a lengthy and unpleasant conversation with Jennings in his office. "We will be going into this upcoming season with a different mindset. To those whom much is given, much is expected, a quote from one of our past presidents. As we begin this new chapter, our goal is the same, but our mentality isn't."

We all began to look at each other confused by Jennings last words because our mentality has always been the same (at least from the two years I've been here). "I don't care who we're up against this season, we will jump in and compete. Compete as if every meet was the last meet you were to swim, we will treat every meet as if we were at Nationals. There's no going easy on anyone this season, not even GSU. If Winston and the other commentators at ESPN want something to talk about, we will give them something to talk about."

"The pressure for this season is now on, more than ever before guys," Tanner spoke and I smell the five am early practices from a mile away. "For our practice schedule, we will be training two times a day the five days of the week. That includes an early five am practice and a four pm practice combined with physical training in the gym. You will have the weekend free, but if you wish to train during the weekends as well the pavilion will remain open for all of you to use."

"With that being said, this means no excessive partying and drinking during the week. This goes to you four boys over there, especially you Dant." Coach Jennings points to O'Connor, Connery, Dant, and Becker. They kept a straight face and nodded, but I was certain they would be making a weekly appearance at the block parties at Ackerman Road. Ackerman Road is filled with sororities, frat houses, and other non-relevant houses (to most BGU students) like the art club. "Now, let's begin practice with a fifteen-hundred-meter freestyle warm-up and I want it at an eighty percent rate."

At least it wasn't three thousand meters I thought to myself. I walked over to the lane I shared with Reagan and three other girls from the team and I jumped in the freezing cold water. I adjusted my cap and my goggles before I began to swim the warm-up. "O'Connor, did you forget to use a two-beat kick during summer break? You are swimming 800 meters freestyle this season, get a grip, you'll have an empty tank by the time you reach the 400 meters if you keep kicking like that."

As I swam back and forth, picking up my pace every time I flipped at the end of each 25 meters, I could hear Coach Jennings shouting at everyone and we were just in the warm-up portion of practice. "Green, you're reaching too far with your recovery arm. You're causing additional turbulence and unwanted drag."

There it was. I was finding it strange that Coach Jennings didn't point out my (very) bad freestyle technique.

Tanner and Jennings didn't come to play nice today at practice. We ended up doing 200 meters of a kick set (25m underwater kick, 25m back, 25m breast, 25m free, 25m fly, 25m back, 25m breast, 25m free) just to start practice after we all finished our warm-up. Then for the next set, we did 300 meters of pull drills (one of my favorite drills if I'm being honest) it focused on bilateral breathing and training with slight oxygen debt. For this drill we ended up doing 50m free catch-up—breath at three strokes; 50m free fingertip drag—breathe at five strokes and 100m free with paddles (no kick); 100m free.