Awesome Winter Practices Including 100 x 100's!

100 x 100's, Indy 500 (400), Open Water in the Pool Among the Great Practices This Winter!

This was the first winter in recent history that PCST has offered workouts throughout  the entire winter break.  We've certainly taken a great step forward with this training for our Senior, Pre-Senior and Age Group swimmers as we get ready to make the biggest impression we've ever made at the Short Course Southeastern Championships!  Here are some of the incredible workouts we've had recently during the winter training.

16 Tsunamis Join The "Century Club" with 100 x 100's!
It was a beautiful Saturday morning and Coach Jonathan was turning 30 years old.  As a present to me, the swimmers said they wanted to swim 100 x 100's in my honor!  HAHAHA......okay, so maybe that's not how it went down.  Although our seniors did not have a choice in the matter, they actually surprisingly embraced the idea of swimming 100 x 100's that Saturday morning.  After a 1000 yard warm-up, we proceeded to kick start what turned out to be one heck of a morning.  It was our first time breaking the 10,000 yard mark in a single practice, so congratulations to the swimmers below who are now official members of the "CENTURY CLUB"!

The Century Club
Cody Bronnenberg, Nicole Gazia, Victoria Hove, Carlee McDonald, Jamie McDonald, Kyle Olstad, Chet Seaman, Michael Whitehead, Michael Duderstadt, Astrid Escobar, Evan Escobar, Jonathan Ratliff, Kristen Ratliff, Kareem Rifai, Allison Troia, Nate Reyes (**Mary McDermott swam 9200 but had to get out early, still completing 82 of the 100 x 100's)

And Then Came the Indy 500 (or Indy 400)!
As a freshman at Florida State, I had the pleasure of doing this workout of pure freestyle, pure pain and really short intervals!  I had never swum 10,000 yards in a single practice before and the set finished off at 9,800 yards total.  Not only was I physically incapable of swimming a 200 easy, I had to wait 10 minutes before I could pull myself out of the pool.  I've been waiting a few years until we had swimmers physically and mentally ready for this challenge and now I'm proud to say that we have done it!  Here's a taste of the workout (intervals are based on the top swimmers that day).

1000 warm up mix

1500 Free (on 1:15 base)
3 x 500's Free (on 1:12 base)
15 x 100's Free (5 on 1:15, 5 on 1:10, 5 on 1:05)

1000 Free (on 1:15 base)
2 x 500's Free (on 1:12 base)
10 x 100's Free (5 on 1:10, 5 on 1:05)

500 Free (on 1:15 base)
5 x 100''s (on 1:05)
10 x 50's (on :40)

10,000 yards total!

Indy 500 Graduates!
Cody Bronnenberg, JD Clutch, Nicole Gazia, Victoria Hove, Carlee McDonald, Jamie McDonald, Chet Seaman, Troy vonBlankenburg, Michael Whitehead, Evan Escobar

The "Indy 400" was based on the same set-up but each swim was based around a 400 free instead of a 500 free.  I believe the total yardage for that set was 7700 yards in 2  hours.  Here are the Indy 400 graduates!

Indy 400 Graduates!
Michael Duderstadt, Astrid Escobar, Dylan Mock, Kyle Olstad, Jonathan Ratliff, Kristen Ratliff, Phoenix Rine, Allison Troia, Max White, Shane Young

Last Practice of 2009!
It's important to keep in mind that after 2.5 weeks of high level conditioning, it was important to finish off 2009 with a fun bang.  Most swimmers got between 35,000-50,000 yards of swimming in 3 days each week, so most of them more than earned some fun on December 30th, 2009.  I hope you enjoy some of the pictures below from that practice.  Lots of smiling faces! :)  I took a fun video of it took but don't know how to upload it to this news article, so I will be emailing that for you to enjoy.

2010 Begins With Open Water Races In the Pool! 
Open water in the pool????   Huh??  You heard right.  On Saturday, January 2nd, PCST took out the lane ropes and set up buoys in the pool to create an open water race course.  Our faithful age groupers took half of the pool and our dedicated seniors took the other half.  Once the age groupers finished their race, our seniors continued on to have 3 more races.  Below are the results from those races.

Seniors Race #1 (20 Laps of Free)
Allison Troia (28:48)
Nicole Gazia (28:52)
Cody Bronnenberg, Chet Seaman, Carlee McDonald, Victoria Hove (29:46)
Michael Whitehead (31:07)
Jamie McDonald (31:15)
Kyle Olstad (31:18)
Brandon Templeton (32:27)
Max White (32:37)
Brandon Ramirez (34:01)

Seniors Race #2 (20 Laps of Free with Fins)
Cody Bronnenberg (25:44)
Chet Seaman (25:47)
Michael Whitehead (26:35)
Victoria Hove (26:44)
Nicole Gazia (26:53)
Max White (27:14)
Allison Troia (27:48)
Jamie McDonald (27:57)
Carlee McDonald (28:56)
Brandon Templeton (29:06)
Kyle Olstad (29:18)
Brandon Ramirez (25:37 15 laps)

Seniors Race #3 (5 Laps Kick with Board)
Chet Seaman (9:13)
Carlee McDonald (9:45)
Nicole Gazia (10:20)
Allison Troia, Jamie McDonald (10:44)
Victoria Hove (10:45)
Kyle Olstad (11:09)
Cody Bronnenberg, Michael Whitehead (11:25)
Brandon Templeton (12:11)
Max White, Brandon Ramirez (12:41)

Seniors Race #4 (5 Laps Kick with Fins & Board)
Michael Whitehead (6:36)
Cody Bronnenberg (6:48)
Victoria Hove (6:51)
Max White, Nicole Gazia (6:58)
Chet Seaman (6:59)
Carlee McDonald (7:26)
Allison Troia, Jamie McDonald (7:42)
Brandon Templeton (7:49)
Kyle Olstad (8:03)

Age Groupers, I apologize but I cannot find your results!  Coach Brian gave them to me and I have misplaced them.  Just as soon as I have them I will post them to here, so keep an eye out.  Congratulations though to Kari Troia for winning the Age Group 15 lap race!!  Other great competitors that morning were Kalanne Krause, Amelia Talkington, Rachel Sullivan, Cameron Fitzgerald and Chad McGuire!

CATCH THE WAVE!

Coach Jonathan