Pictures from our Christmas training camp in Luxembourg.

I’ll be in Luxembourg at the National Training Center Coque for a 10 day camp with my team. We look forward to some long course swimming and getting some good base work for 2012 done.

Training pool (6-lanes 50m) at Coque Center.

Just this past week I also worked again with the swimmer from Tampa Bay Aquatics while on their 3rd team training trip in the Florida Keys. This time around it was more focus on dryland and circuit work as Gary did the technique sessions. You can read Julia Lamb’s, TBAY coach, testimonial on their experience on the Race Club website.

During this summer I have been working with the three Briggs boys – Trey, P.J. and John – down in the Keys. They had a full week of private lessons and we all learned a lot from each other. You can read their testimonial about their experience on the Race Club website.

Madi has been down in the Keys for a Race Club camp more than once but her last visit was the first time I got to coach her. She has been on a roll lately and her mom sent me some pictures from Sectionals where she wore the Swiss cap. Go Madi!

Read her full testimonial on the Race Club website.

Rajib Dey, the assistant coach for India at the Beijing Olympics, visited the Summer Camps at the University of Miami to learn about the coaching methods of The Race Club. This is video is the 1st part talking about starts. You can watch the 2nd part on flip turns on YouTube.

Short video of me swimming fly at slow speed in the flume channel at the Tenerife Top Training.

Please be patient as it may take a moment for the video to load before it will start to play.

This completes my daily bits from Tenerife. I’m sitting at the airport Tenerife North while I start writing this last entry. Today wasn’t our lucky day. Our flight got delayed by about an hour and a half and it looks like back home the ground personnel is on strike and there’s about a two our wait at the baggage reclaim.

I did finally get the videos from both of my flume channel swims and will try to post a short sample of me swimming fly later this week. Before leaving the hotel this morning I sat down with my coach and watch all of them again. I think we might have found something that will help me to improve a lot and enhance my swimming.

But back to our trip. The delay only got bigger and we were already thinking about spending the night at the airport in Barcelona. “Fortunately”, our connection flight also got delayed (because of the strike in Geneva) and eventually we were just in time for boarding.

Goes without a saying that we arrived rather late at the airport in Geneva. We knew that our luggage might not make it to the baggage reclaim belts soon after we landed but in the end we all went home without any luggage at all. Could have been a better day but I guess it just was our turn of all those thousand passengers traveling every day.

Just a detail to end. I don’t know if you noticed but we did the 150’000 meters! I also got some more pictures and I will try to post them in the gallery soon. If you missed any of my daily bits you can find all of them here.

“Last” day in Tenerife … it was a busy one! Not only did we have two pool and one gym session on the program but I also planned to meet up with Cassandra and her family. Today also marked the day where I didn’t have to do  an additional set or some additional stroke work at the end of workout after almost two weeks. It almost felt weird finishing up with the team and just doing the regular workout.

So after finishing up with the morning session I was working with Cassandra on her finswimming. I tried to point out the obvious things and give her some drills to improve. I also tried to give her some general advice on her training as well as some insights on nutrition, warm-up, dryland and on other points they had questions.

I had a lot of fun doing this short “clinic” and hope it will help Cassandra. This is how I got into finswimming and learned my lessons … other athletes that shared their knowledge and help me improve to get to the next level.

Before the gym session, there was just enough time to walk down to the hotel to eat and then walk right back up to the Top Training. We did a speed weights session and then went on to the last workout of the camp.

In the evening after dinner we were all hanging in the hotel lobby had a drink. We also invited the athletes from Wales to join us. It ended up being a pretty entertaining evening and a good ending to our stay.

Another day off as the facility was closed for a full day on January 1st, 2010. And of course again Happy New Year! We didn’t have any plans at all for this day off. Everyone was happy to sleep in and I wanted to get some work for school done.

After a “late” breakfast I went ahead and got at least a few things done … it’s really hard to focus on school work while outside the sun is shining and there a million other things you could do at that same moment. Later in the afternoon I made another walk on the beach and almost ended up going down the whole coast. That was about all … back to sleep for the last day of training.