Season 3 swimming has started, this season was meant to be full of swim competitions however due to coronavirus we have been restricted from traveling or competing in events with other 100 people.  This means that SEASAC was canceled, Age group time trails have been canceled, dragons den has been canceled and our main competition; Nationals has been postponed to march. A large part of our training is to test out abilities in competition environments and aim to update times, so as a way to do this there has been an introduction to alternative competitions for us to compete in, such as a dual meet with Dover and possibly looking at competing overseas (unattached to the school). The competitions that I would like to look into would be state age group championships in Australia and New Zealand.

In terms of training, the past month has been very intensive and nonstop, our resting periods in training are always due to competitions, however now that there are no current competitions the training levels and standards have continuously been set high. Over the Chinese new year break, as part of our training, we traveled to Phuket to train at Thanyapura (A sports resort) for a week. The sets were a lot harder than usual and pushed me as a swimmer and individual in general, it tested a lot of my boundaries and helped form my weaknesses into strengths. It was very inspirational to be training with the best as well, some of the teams including Olympic level swimmers (Saint peters, AUS team, Hungarian team, Austrian team, and Chinese team. Each day consisted of 2-hour training in the morning, 2-hour land training (Either after the first or second session) and a second 2-hour swim session in the afternoon. Thanyapura allowed for our team to grow closer than it already is, the swim team is an amazing group of people that love and support each other, making it a very large part of my life. The following 2 weeks when we got back have been a further test of motivation and dedication, through hard training and new levels of mental strength. I recently have added a morning, meaning I now do 8 training sessions and 3 land sessions out of the possible 9 swim sessions and 3 land sessions. As much as this isn’t a large thing, it does show me the amount of time and progression I am putting in and getting out of the sport. I look forward to possible competitions in the future and the excitement of success.

#LO6