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.

Although this is the entry for December 31st, as I’m sitting here on the coach writing it’s already 2010, so Happy New Year! May the lanes be plenty and all the water good and fast!

After the morning workout we had another flume channel session on the program to be able to compare our swim with last week’s tapes. But first we had to earn to swim the channel as we had a 6x800m to go through. Well, at least workout went over quick this way and with all the easy and loosen swimming between and after the flume we did a total of 9300 meters this morning.

In the afternoon we had a solid free pace set with pullbuoy and paddles. Made it through pretty well holding solid splits but was a bit hurt at the end. Back at the hotel we had another special dinner waiting for us to start the closing of 2009.

There’s only one full day of training left in Tenerife for us before we’ll leave on Sunday. Obviously, this makes tomorrow, January 1st, a day off as the Tenerife Top Training will be closed. But I’m thinking about a short run and ocean swim in the afternoon.

By the way, our goal is to get to 150’000 meters overall for this training camp. It looks like we will be there on the spot at the end of Saturday’s afternoon workout.

Wednesday’s are Spa days. But first we had to go through 2 pool and one gym session. The weather is still nice but there’s a pretty chilly breeze coming in from the Atlantic Ocean. Morning workout wasn’t that hard but we did some “warm-up” for the main set of fast 50′s in the afternoon. I’m also starting to think about changing my main stroke to something other than fly … it might just be me but there are way too many fly sets in practice lately.

Our afternoon started with a max and power weight session. Later we followed up with some fast 50′s in the pool. We were working quite a lot on DPS (distance per stroke) on the fast swimming parts lately and I’m getting to a point where I’m able to hold good splits with a low stroke count. Together with the tweaks we were able to do after the first flume channel session my fly starts to feel well again.

At the end of the afternoon session we had again access to the Spa of the Tenerife Top Training. I did quite an extensive sauna session today and felt great afterwards. Tomorrow morning we’ll be once more swimming in the flume channel. Hopefully, we be able to see some improvements from last weeks session and all the tweaking we did since then.

Sadly, our time comes slowly to an end. The facility will be closed on January 1st and that means another day off for us. We don’t have any plans yet for New Year’s Eve but I guess it won’t be hard to find some place to go.

Quite a lazy day. We started our daily routine in the morning but with the rumors confirmed we would not have to go back to the pool in the afternoon today. After a rough day yesterday this morning was mainly just swimming. And I finally got to have my massage as well after the morning workout.

There’s really not much to tell today. Swimming 7000m meters in the  morning without getting too much hurt (aside from the pain that is there since day one) and a massage after practice … sounds good to me.

After lunch I tried to get some school work done but the training camp and “holiday” feeling didn’t help to get done a bunch. But at least I tried to be a good student.

I’m probably going to take a short walk on the beach and a short “swim” in the hotel pool before dinner. But I guess that will be all for the day. We’ll be back in action for a few more full days again tomorrow morning.

Also today I got contacted (did you know that you can get in touch with me as well?) by someone living on the Island who wants me to take a look at his daughters finswimming and possibly work with her for a while on one of the days before we leave on Sunday. I’ll try to set something up for Saturday Jan 2nd in the morning.

After a hard day yesterday we did get some more easy swimming this morning with just some more intense kicking mixed in. In the morning the sun was still shinning and we went the full 8000 meters with ease. Before the afternoon session we heard a rumor that tomorrow afternoon will be off, so we got a little excited.

(Un)fortunately, the rumor got confirmed and we had to get to work during the afternoon session. Nothing like some serious pace work … even better if you get to do same set in fly as all the freestylers on your team. Although, I still felt the fatigue of the last week I managed to get through with the fly work in good style.

The other teams as well as another group from Lancy Natation were all at the pool today. There are now teams from Austria, Germany, Wales and Switzerland training at the Tenerife Top Training. Props to the group of your younger athletes who arrived late (early) at 4 am and showed up to morning practice.

We also started to tweak my fly technique over the last two days after we got the video analysis from the flume channel swim. Feels like it’s going to improve my fly by making my stroke more fluid. Also tomorrow I’m signed up for a massage … hopefully the guy will show up this time.

Sunday but we still did doubles today. And to add to it, the workouts were pretty hard as well. The good news … the weather is finally set on sunshine from the morning hours.

One part of the morning session that we don’t really like is the 15 minutes “dryland” warm-up before the swimming. We already have to “climb” up to the pool early in the morning but once we get there it all really starts. Not that were not awake by the time we get to the pool but the routine our coach set up is pretty demanding and not so much fun early in the morning.

Before the afternoon workout we had another gym session on the program which didn’t help to get through the main set afterwards. But somehow we managed to get through all of the pain and get back to the hotel. This evening all of us were in bed and sleeping before 10 pm.

Another “fun” fact that I didn’t tell you about yet is that you have to wear a swim cap at the 3T pool. Also today marked the last day for the Russian Water Polo Team but there will be new swim teams coming in on Monday.

Back in the water after our day off yesterday and back to the usual 7 am breakfast wake up. All was a little bit easier tough as for the first time we had a beautiful day here in Tenerife. Waking up and swimming under the warm sun already in the morning is why we came here. I was supposed to have a massage after the morning session and thus had to work a little harder than my team mates in the morning.

Unfortunately, the guy never showed up and so I went ahead with another quality stretching session with ocean view instead. And of course without the massage I was back working a hard set in the afternoon again with my team mates.

Other than that there’s really not a lot the tell. Training is going pretty well for what I was up to before the camp and I hope to take some benefits of the good work into 2010. I will try to add the mileage of each day and the total at the end of each entry over the next days so you get an idea where we’re at in the pool.

What a great day … it was our 1st day off after eight pool and two gym sessions. We did have a couple good ideas of what we wanted to do but it all changed that same day in the morning. After we all slept in a little longer for once and had our breakfast we tried to figure out what to do. The initial plan was to visit the “Monkey Park” in the morning and moving on to the “Siam Park” in the afternoon.

We did investigate the lady at the reception desk about all the different options and finally decided to go straight to the “Siam Park“. Apparently, the animals in the “Monkey Park” are held in small cages and aren’t happy at all. The lady told us to go and visit another animal park but this one was too far away since we don’t have a car at our disposal.

Yaws

We were able to buy our tickets directly at the hotel reception and then took off with a taxi to Siam Park. It was a short drive and we arrived at 10 am sharp and were almost the first visitors to enter the park.

After a short walk around to check out the different attraction we went ahead for 5 straight ours running around and taking one slide after another.

On the left there’s a picture of their newest attraction called “Yaws”. Looks pretty scary but goes over really fast. The coolest part is that the tube is going through a pool with sharks and other aquatic animals. It’s hard to see any of them though as your rushing through the tube.

Although, only four of us decided to go to Siam Park but we had a great day and even some sun in the afternoon. The day ended with the Christmas dinner at our hotel in the evening.

Check out my gallery for more pictures from our day at the Siam Park and other new shots from the last few days in Tenerife.