Sunday, August 31, 2008

Adelaide: Norwood Swim Club and Burnside Swim Club


First practice was only at 5:45am, since it was a Saturday. Peter Bishop is the head coach of the Norwood Swim Club. He coaches Hayden Stockel (the Aussie that broke the Olympic record in the semis of the 100 back). He also coaches Matt Cowdrey (push 50 meters free in 26 +). He is swimming 8 events at the Paralympics in Beijing. Matt is an amputee from the elbow down on his left arm. He leaves for training camp with Peter today. Matt is FAST. He should be coming back with a few golds. Peter also has a female swimmer, Shelley Rogers, with CP and she has made the Aussie Paralympic team was well. She will be swimming 200 IM. Peter seems to be a fantastic coach. He was highly recommended by numerous other coaches as well as the CEO of the Australian Swim Coaches and Teachers Association. He really coaches… stops them when they are not training technically the way they should be. His swimmers seem to respect and enjoy what he puts into the practices. Again, very quality focused, no garbage yardage. Today they went quality swimming focusing on stroke tempo and stroke count. They went a total of about 4200 SC meters. The pool today was one that they prefer not to use… warmer water and poor air circulation . So their quality sets were a little shorter in duration than what they might be at the other pool (Monday’s practice). The Norwood Swim Club also has a HUGE learn to swim school, they have about 1500-2000 kids come through the school every year. The Australian push to have everyone know how to swim is amazing. I understand that they are all around water, but the parents have to want to have their children in these programs even if they live inland.
Monday we trained at the Adelaide Aquatic Center on the north side of the city. I followed Shelley Camy, a new coach from the UK, who has just moved to AU and take over the Burnside Swim Club. I think she has been here for only 11 weeks. She brought with her one of the Olympians from her former team. It seems that big name swimmers help the club to grow. I am still getting a kick out of the Australian news. The big news was that Stephanie Rice “might” be Michael Phelps’s new girlfriend. When interview, Stephanie said that they had briefly met and she is “so impressed with what Michael has accomplished”. So, she might not be his new girlfriend, but I am sure she will read his new memoir that he announced he would be writing. All the commercials on the television are also sport related. There is one with Brooke Hansen with a laptop at the pool. She comes over in her swim suit and picks up the lap top and starts typing. Then someone splashes her, and spills water on the lap top and she turns the lap top over, the water pours off and then she says “be careful”. I think she got lots of money for that. The Olympics is 24 hours on the TV, ABC, channel 7. They are into it.
Practice on Monday.
First practice with Burnside was and afternoon practice. They had FOUR teams using the pool at the same time. The pool is amazing, however. 8 lane 50-meter, with separate diving and water polo pool. The diving area has four 3-meters, four 1-meters and tower with10-meter on down. They have a dryboard and do trampoline work as well. I guess Adelaide is known for their divers. They have nothing to do with Burnside swimming, they are a separate entity. I saw some really impressive divers. There seemed to be about four different coaches and athletes ranging from 6 years old to 18-20 years old. The water polo program is again separate from the swimming club. The program I was watching was H.S. Swimmers on Burnside (and anyone that uses this pool) needs to be a member of the Aquatic Center and then also pay fees for the swim team. Then the Aquatic Center charges the teams for lane use. Seems like a little double dipping to me. Some teams charge club fees of up to $190/month where others are as reasonable as $200/3 months. They have their state meet this weekend. Entry fees are $11-12 per EVENT! Some kids were swimming 8 or 9 events. Yikes!
Probably one of the most surprising things with this first practice, was a swimmer that I met. He was a study-abroad college swimmer from Denison, Matt Newton. He had been in Adelaide for about 4 weeks and swims with Burnside three times per week. We chatted after practice about swimmers I knew that attend Denison and the unique aspects of Australia that can make an American a little nutsy.
The training was a massive threshold set: 24x100 (SCM) at threshold @1:45. Threshold was PB plus 10-15 sec. The last one was from a dive and all out. This was the first set I witnessed that was somewhat similar to typical American training. She still had a focus of stroke count per 50, and a certain number of kicks off the wall. This program was less developed than the other two and younger. With Shelly only being there for 11 weeks, I could easily see the difference. A unique aspect of training here is that for a recovery after a threshold or lactate set, the coach has the swimmers put fins on and kick a fast 600 fly kick. This is supposed to remove lactate faster than just easy swimming. The swimmers were not real “keen” (Aussie language) on this.
There were also some unique aspects to coach’s pay. I was told (by someone not from Burnside) that the previous Burnside Coach earned $100-110/year. However, only $40K was paid in cash. It was very typical for someone to come in with a case of wine (if their family owned a vineyard), or petro vouchers, or bartering for free groceries if the family owned a grocery store. This was all in exchange for coaching fees.
The next practice was a morning practice (5-7am). Again, the pool being shared but not as many teams or people. The squad is expected to do anywhere from 5-10 sessions per week. It seems that a virus had been going through and numbers were a little low b/c of this. From morning practice they all head out to school. Most schools start at 8:30am. For afternoon practice they actually can get a pass to be let out :30 minutes early from school to attend swim practice. These are H.S. students… I was blown away by this. That is how swim club and swim training is viewed by schools and by the country.
Yardage was a little higher here than with Norwood or Nunawading in Melbourne. I think there is more of a similarity between UK training and American training. Lots of pulling and they use bands like the other two teams did.
Aside from swimming stuff, I fed Kangaroos (see picture), pet a Koala, saw some of the most beautiful coastline with Kangaroos just roaming around, obtained a new addiction for Iced Coffee (apparently they think Dr. Pepper is disgusting and I have only found it at one market, for three dollars a can), and there is certainly no shortage of baked goods here (pastries galore).

Thursday, August 21, 2008

Melbourne… check.

Melbourne was awesome. Thank you Nunawading Swimming Club and coach Nick Veliades. (picture of me and nick). Practices were getting harder to get to as I was adjusting to the time change. To make the 5am practice meant continually getting up at 3:50am. Traffic is good (i.e., light), but there is still the issue of driving on the left side. Time is quite off. For example, it is 9:15pm Thursday in AU and 6:15am Thurs. in Iowa.
So, my last training session was this morning. Both today and the last two days prior have been the most interesting from a training perspective. This team is pretty quick… like h.s. age females going 1:02 stand-up 100 meter free. The h.s. age guys were going :56-:58. They did a quality set yesterday, followed immediately with lactate testing. This club program has everything a university team would have in the US. Their college/university system is very different than ours. Almost all will go to “Uni” in their hometown (i.e, Melbourne) and live at home. They DO NOT swim for their Uni. There are hardly any swimming programs at the college/university level. So… back to lactate testing…they have their own lactate testing equipment. After this MVo2 set, their lactate mmls were anywhere from 1.1 to 13.6. They have tested lactate in relation to warm-down amounts and warm-down intensity and have come up with some really interesting information (i.e, look for a possible change in our warm-dwn, dogs and ducks).

They also use heart rate monitors that have the “swimming handle” attached so they just press the monitors to their chest to get an immediate reading, then pass it along to the next person. Their athletes show up on time… meaning dressed and ready to get in the water before 5am… They have up to 10 training sessions a week, but the total mileage is not what would happen in the US with that many sessions. They are very quality focused and do purposeful training. Each session leads into the next. I never found any garbage yardage.

The dryland “gym” session was fantastic. I took quite a bit of video and I am sure Tim will get really psyched about some of this stuff. This team has their own “physio” or conditioning coach. His name is Simon. Simon was extremely informative. (i.e., look for a possible addition of some exercises, dogs and ducks).

Aussies LOVE their sports. It was not more than two days after Stephanie Rice won gold in the 200 IM before she was on an Australian postal stamp. All of their gold medal winners have a postal stamp of themselves. It takes YEARS here to get on a stamp, and God forbid it would be an athlete. 1 hour of TV Evening News… :30 minutes of weather, happenings, etc. and :30 minutes of sport. I think I love it.

So, not to worry… it has not been all swimming. I have seen wallabees (sp?), kangaroos, the Great Ocean Road and the Apostles, had lots of great coffee, incredible fruits, and some really crazy driving!

I hope you all are getting ready to start a fantastic 2008-09 school year!

Sunday, August 17, 2008

First Training Session... 5am

First things first... the Commonwealth Games pool in Melbourne... (not the pool where the team I am working with swims). Took a tour of the pool yesterday.

Okay, with the first training session at 5am, that means getting up before 4... good thing for being messed up on time zone change. I visited with the Nunawading Swim Club. The first training session was more of a recovery practice as they have just come off a competition this past weekend. There were two training groups. The National Open Squad (mostly ages 21 and over) and the National Youth squad (high school age). There is really no college swimming here... like we have it in the US. They all had a two hour practice then either went off to High School or home or to college classes somewhere in Melbourne. The NO groups had a "tribute to Michael Phelps" practice. They incorporated all of his 17 events from the Olympics into the practice. The total was about 5k-6k (meter). They used lots of equipment, paddles, pull-buoy, fins, snorkel (lots) and sponges... the sponges were like using parachutes but more controlled, as they use them for building strength instead of power.

Their NO team has Prue Watt on their team. She will be leaving this Saturday for the Paralympics in China. She is blind (like 90% in one eye and 80% in the other). She will be swimming the 100 fly... she is about 1:08 in meters.


I am leaving in a few hours for their second practice (5:15-7:30pm). One hours of dryland and then the rest of swimming. They are to do some high quality swims tonight.


Yesterday was a tourist day. I spent most of the day with GC swimming alum Natasha Vasey. We also made the time to watch the final day of swimming. The Aussies are NUTS about their sports... especially swimming. We were in a restaurant for the events and the entire place was cheering and totally into their Aussie swimmers and Michael Phelps. He has a great reputation here and seems to be seen as a really nice guy.


Back with more later...

Saturday, August 16, 2008

I made it!

All is good. Flights were non eventful, and that is what everyone should hope for when they fly. Saw Maiko Morotani (GC tennis player '04?) in LA airport. A planned meeting and a nice hour spent. The flight from LA to Melbourne was just shy of 15 hours. Qantas airlines was very accomodating. With the way airlines have been handling people these days, I was quite surprised. I had a delicious dinner, snack and then breakfast all in about 8 hours. I was able to watch a documentary on the East German swimmers training for the '72 Munich Olympics. The female athletes, 30 plus years a later, talking about the drugs they were given with out their knowledge. Pretty amazing doc.
Melbourne... landed about 8:50am, on Saturday... (left Des Moines about 5pm on Thursday). Pretty amazing city. Upon driving from the Airport to the Quest on Lonsdale (about a 20 minute drive), I went through areas that reminded me of Chicago ("little Italy, "China town", then other ethnic clusters such as turkish, indian, etc). Driving was a little challenging... Steering wheel on the left side of the car and driving always in the left lane. Can't tell you how many times I used the windshield wiper instead of the turn signal. The turn signal is on the right side of the steering wheel. It was raining and cool, but this did not stop people from shopping, and hussling about. It is the end of winter here, so about 40F. After checking in, the first thing on the list was getting a good cup of coffee. Not hard to find. That warmed me up and got me re-focused. Found a "Safeway" shopping center where it seems everyone goes to get groceries. Found these yummy little "pikelets", mini pancakes that are packaged like bagels. Got more food than that of course. Food, coffee, gas, parking, everything is quite expensive. Parking meters are $3.25 per hour. My cup of joe was $3.00. So much for small town prices.

Woke up at 4:40am today (went to bed last night at 7pm... all australia time). Was dying last night... sleep deprivation makes you see funny things.

Heading out to meet Natasha Vasey '97 and her daughter for lunch/brunch in a few minutes in St. Kilda beach. Will take public transportation for that. Hope to write more tonight with some pictures!

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Starting to pack...

So, I have rummaged through the swimming equipment room to get as many old Grinnell t-shirts as possible (Grinnell Invite 2003, Alumni Relays 2006), and all the Dan Neely originals. i hope the little Aussie swimmers will enjoy them. All swim team/coaches contacts have been finalized. My first practice is with Nunawading Swim Club in Melbourne, AU at 5am on Monday, Aug. 18th. This team has 9 different coaches I will be working with. 5am... hmmm I wonder if this might be a good idea at Grinnell?

I plan to see Natasha Vasey (GC swim alum'97) and her 2 year old daughter for lunch at the beach on Sunday. If you are all thinking... ooh, time on the beach, surfing, sunning... well it is winter there. Temps are between 45-70 F. I am actually looking forward to that.

Thanks to: V, PB, Lindsay S., and KJ in Cal., for comments and emails!

Sunday, August 10, 2008

Destinations

Starting on the 14th of August, I leave for Australia via Los Angeles, CA. It will take two calendar days to get to Oz. I arrive in Melbourne on the 16th. From there: Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane, Sydney and then a final week in New Zealand.