Sunday, February 28, 2010

Some important dates for your diaries

Hi everyone

Hope you've all had a great weekend. We had fun yesterday at Chidley Point celebrating Jackson's first birthday. A card from Stuart M summed it up perfectly: 

"I can't believe it's been a year since your Mum went for a swim and then out you popped!"

Time flies and we've had a great first 12 months!

Anyway, I posted these dates: http://www.theteamcore.com/images/Diary_Dates.pdf at the end of January which were aimed specifically at those of you whom attend our 9.30am swim sessions on a Monday, Wednesday and Friday at the Claremont Pool. The main point about the dates is the list of times when we shall be conducting these sessions in the 25m pool rather than the 50m pool, and on two occasions we'll be down at the beach. These dates are spread-out over the month of March due to clashes with school carnivals and we apologise in advance for any inconvenience this causes you. 

The 25m pool is actually a really good venue for practicing push-offs, streamlining, shorter / harder efforts and something which we're going to target during this period: your catch and pull through, so I do hope you'll still be inclined to attend as normal.

Anyway, first session like that is this Wednesday for the Fresh & Fruity session, and boy-o-boy do we have a session lined up for you this week! ;-)

Cheers

Paul




Thursday, February 25, 2010

Public Holiday Weekend

Dear Crew

Just a reminder that even though it's a Public Holiday Long Weekend,
all our sessions on Friday, Saturday and Monday 1st March will all run
as normal including the 1pm Saturday squad swim and Monday's 7am and
9.30am swim sessions.

Hope to see you there!

Cheers

A very hot, Pommie Paul ;-)

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Training This Week

Dear TEAM

OK, quick update on what's happening this week. It's a relatively easy week this week which will suit those of you who raced at the Rottnest Swim on Saturday and equally for those who are following the Half Ironman Program and whom are now into Week # 7 of 16. We will step it up a notch or two on Friday morning for the "Fresh & Fruity" swim and some of you may well be racing the Albany Triathlon on Sunday (awesome event that one!).

Wednesday:

5.30am = squad swim at the pool (1.5hrs) with Adam M this week, including 15 mins of pre-session stretching.

5.50am = ride with Paul which will be a cruisey ride inc. 5 "pick-ups" to help shake the legs off. The program says Shelley, but you guys did that last week when I wasn't there, so I think we'll do what I suggested last week and head over to Shenton Park or maybe even Kings Park. We'll see.

Thursday:

AM = remember, no open water swim this morning due to it being quite dark at 6am - sorry! On this front its going to be tricky to get any additional lane space at Claremont for a replacement session in the pool, so we are looking at two options at this point: 1) Challenge Stadium (potentially); 2) a circuit class at Cottesloe Beach which will provide a fun, all-round body workout, finishing off with a quick dip in the ocean. I am leaning towards the 2nd option and may open this up as a complimentary session where I actually join you...I think going into the winter, this would make a great session for those of you looking to strengthen up a bit for the English Channel challenge or if you simply lack a bit of this variety in your routine. Please let me know if you'd be keen on this idea!

PM = recovery run intervals at Lake Monger. Still need to get a few more people along to this session if you can make it? This particular session is a great gauge of your developing fitness, so if you can make it its well worth attending. Please bring a HRM if you have one.

Friday:

5.30am, 6.30am & 9.30am sessions all as normal! Remember, no official 4.30pm session after the Rottnest Swim.

Saturday:

6.30am = if you're not racing in Albany, highly recommend another repeat of last week's 3h30 ride (flat, freeway), followed by a 20min run off the bike. Keep it fairly steady this week. Leaving from the Bell Tower for those who can make it, or do it solo in your own time.

7.30am = a fun 2 to 4km ocean swim at Trigg Beach, meeting at the SLSC Tower at 7.15am. A good, social swim for those wanting to loosen off after last weekends efforts.

1.00pm = open water skills session in the pool at Claremont - a massively FUN session!

Sunday:

REST DAY or Albany Triathlon.

Cheers

Paul





Monday, February 22, 2010

Ride for Youth Focus

On Tuesday 23rd March 2010, 44 cyclists will set off from Albany on a 640km ride through the South-West of Western Australia raising money for Youth Focus – a private non-profit community organisation committed to the prevention of suicide, depression and self harm in young people aged 12-18 years old.

As part of our fundraising, team Mirvac (Andrew Kerrich, Cameron Murray, Tony McGrath and squad member Mary Tennant - of "Chasing Pink Mary" fame) are organizing some lawn bowls, drinks, pizza and good times at the Mosman Park Bowling Club.
 
Hope you might be able to come along to what should be a pretty chilled afternoon.  
 
All welcome, bring whoever! 
 
Please contact Mary Tennant to confirm interest - email = tencap@westnet.com.au
 
PLEASE NOTE: Booking form is here: http://www.theteamcore.com/images/mary1.doc and flier is here: http://www.theteamcore.com/images/mary2.jpg, or you can pay at the door just let Mary know you're coming so they can cater!! 
 
Cheers
Team Mirvac
Ride for Youth





Sunday, February 21, 2010

Great results at the Rottnest Swim

Dear Swimmers

Wow! What a weekend, hey? Tough conditions and another "slow" year, but everyone did really well and was still smiling at the other end. You really have to pinch yourself when doing the Rottnest Channel Swim - it truly is one of the best events that you can do anywhere in the world I believe and if you've ever sat there thinking "hmmm, I wish I could do that but just don't think I strong / fast / good enough to do so", then think again! The best thing about it is the huge range of abilities that the event attracts...where else can you rub shoulders with so many Olympians, Bondi Rescue Vets (?!) and other celebrities and then enjoy an awesome party at the Quokka Arms once over there. Its a brilliant festival of swimming and to be part of it each year never ceases to be inspiring. One thought I had for next year was to organise several teams from within the squad with 4 swimmers of differing abilities so that the stronger, more experienced swimmers might be able to assist those who've never tried the event before. Watch this space!

So, the results can be seen here (highlighted in yellow are our 74 swimmers who took part):


We even got a mention in The West (although not all the details are totally correct I have to say!):


Well done to everyone who took part, of special mention were the 13 solos who completed the event, 7 for the first time! Ceinwen took 3rd place overall in the female event and went 10 mins faster than last year in arguably worse conditions! Mark Scanlon did a fine job finishing 5th overall in just under 5 hours in his bid to successfully swim the English Channel later this year. Also in the solos, Suzanne Narbey had a stellar performance to finish 15th lady overall in 6 hours 38 minutes. Congratulations to all the solos - Ceiwen, Lisa, Suzanne, Mary-Anne, Justine, Hannah, Mark, Geoff, Andrew # 1, Julien, Michael, Andrew # 2, and Vaughn - you did yourselves proud! Unfortunately Justin didn't make it across and suffered very bad vomiting and hypothermia which put an end to his bid for the island - tough, tough conditions.

In the DUOs, The Water Bearers (Adam and Belinda) got the better of The Pickles (Paul and Michelle) in 5 hours 22 minutes and 5 hours 35 minutes respectively to finish 2nd and 4th position. We were very pleased with our result and it was really special to be able to partner-up with Mish in this way and have such a strong crossing after the last 12 months of very little training with looking after our new little man. Top marks to Adam and Belinda though, they rocked it! John Edwards had a really good day swimming with his partner Cy for the Bulagria team and Nat "The Rat" did great with her partner Jackie to finish in just over 7.5 hours and finish in the top-10 in their category. Nat also raised a considerable amount of money for her "Swim for Sarah" breast cancer charity - so thanks for all who contributed to that! Suzanne (and Nicola), Kim (and Ken), Paul, Chris, Trevor, David, Serena (and Bart), Bill (and Jeremy), John (and David), Nimal (and Erez) all battled the conditions and made it safely across to the island.

There were 28 teams in the event with swimmer's from the squad - getting podium positions were the following performances: Katrina Mercer with her "The Iona Chicks & CUZ" team; Felicity Bailey, Melissa Cooney and Kristy Fogarty with their team "Rexalicious" (should that be "Relaxicious"?!); Emmy Poulson and her "Feet First" team; Jeremy Buttsworth with his "Walruses" team; Liz Dundas and Guy Van Hazel with their "Aqua Dragons Grace Darling" team; and Desiree Silva with her "Dreamtime" Charity Challenge Team. Well done as well to all those who competed and survived the teams event - I wonder if any of you are considering a DUO or even SOLO next year now perhaps??

So training is back to normal this week (except for the absence of the Thursday morning open water swim - still working on alternatives for that - watch this space!). No doubt some of you will have an easy few days to recover from the event, but don't forget we'll be getting something pumping for the Good Friday Swim Challenge in just 6 weeks time, so well worth staying fit for that!

The Rottnest Channel Swim - a total W.A Institution if ever there was one! Makes you feel proud to live in Perth, that's for sure!

Cheers

Paul




Thursday, February 18, 2010

Open water clinic and English Channel meeting

Dear Swimmers

A couple of things today:

1) Open Water Swimming Clinic with Shelley Taylor-Smith

Clinic No.2: Saturday 27th  February 10am-12noon
Where: Sorrento: Sorrento Surf Lifesaving Club, West Coast Drive, Sorrento
Includes Theory & Practical: Get Wet with the Champ!

2) English Channel - prospective swimmer's meeting

When: Wednesday 3rd March at 6pm
Where: 22 Fairfield Street, Mount Hawthorn (BBQ - please bring meat and drinks, we'll do the rest)

NB: Please let me know if you are coming - we need to look at booking various aspects of this challenge. This is your chance to come and find out more about what swimming the English Channel entails, the costs, the training etc. Hope to see Suzanne Laidlaw, Ceinwen Williams, Mary-Anne Paton, Nic Holmes, Geoff Wilson, Lisa Delaurentis, Andrew Hunt, Nimal Wickramasinghe, Arie Dielsen, John Edwards and anyone else keen on thinking about giving it a crack in July / August 2011.

Cheers

Paul





Wednesday, February 17, 2010

How Friday's swim will pan out and a team needs a swimmer!

Dear All

3 more sleeps...wahoo! Conditions are going to be great, don't panic and don't waste any energy worrying about what you cannot control anyway.

URGENT! Kathryn Granheim's team is in desperate need of an additional team swimmer for Saturday owing to a sick team member. Can anyone help or fancy the challenge? Email Kathryn at Kathryn.Granheim@iir.com.au

Friday morning's swim will work like this:

Warm-up = 

Rotto swimmers or those wanting an easy session: 10 mins stretching on pool deck

Non-rotto swimmers: standard sort of a warm-up

Build & Main =

Then we'll all do a bit of a build set in the pool including some drills, followed by a couple of short, sharp efforts which will do more to waken you up than tire you out for Saturday! We may add a bit of a team element to this as well.

It will be a shortened swim for everyone this week as mentioned previously with the Rotto swimmers doing ~1500m and everyone else ~2.2 to 2.5km.

Looking forward to it - it'll be a good one!

Cheers

Paul





Monday, February 15, 2010

Update on Squad List

Dear TEAM

Apologies for the recent profusion of updates regarding the Squad - I sincerely appreciate your time and feedback in this regard in order to continue to make this a great squad in which to train.

As promised, I have produced a revised version of the Squad List. That can be seen here: http://theteamcore.com/images/Confirmed_Squad_List.pdf - please take a moment to scan your details and let me know if they are correct. If I have highlighted your name in the dusty-red colour, this simply means that I'd like you to confirm your place in that particular session due to some duplicates in the system or if we haven't seen you for a while.

On the PAYG front - I had an overwhelming response requesting this payment system to be kept "as is". I'm personally very happy about this as I too feel that it works well and offers you all the flexibility and value that training with a squad should entail. Stuart Murray kindly put forward a proposition about me holding onto everyone's cards so that you don't have to remember them and then email you when your card has expired. This is sound in practice but offers two hurdles: a) loss of "ownership" of the card, i.e. knowing immediately where you're at with payments etc; b) a huge amount of administration work for myself with a squad now in excess of 200 people. However, whilst this current system is not geared up for that, I shall be investigating some sort of unique card swipe system similar to the pool's reception and will keep you posted in due course - so thanks Stuart for your feedback!

If you look at the Squad List, it appears that our major concern at this time is the Friday 5.30am session. It's good to see so much interest in what is characteristically the hardest session of the week! Obviously, Rottnest is this weekend and as such numbers may calm down a little after this point. I have had to place some of the more recent additions to the squad on the Reserve List here, but would request that if you are on this list and can make it this Friday given the shortened session, the additional stretching and the fact that you'd probably worked it already into your itinerary, then please do so. Remember, we always have 4 lanes at 6.30am, so if this works better for any of you 5.30am crew, please let me know and we can do some more shuffling.

Finally, Thursday's 6.00am session this week at Cottesloe Beach will be the final open water session of the season at this day / time due to fading light - if you've not tried one yet, you should! Further details to follow about a replacement session which might ease congestion on a Friday morning. Also, the Saturday 1.00pm session over the last few weeks has really started to drop-off and we'd request your attendance there if you can make it (except for this Saturday of course!). I love running this session and wish to continue doing so, but this may be one for the winter months if it clashes with too many people's summer Saturdays. Let me know your thoughts if you have any on this matter.

Thanks again for your time! Now onto some carbo-loading for the weekend!!

Paul





Sunday, February 14, 2010

Week Ahead!

Dear TEAM

Many thanks to those of you who got back to me over the weekend regarding the numbers on Friday morning's session. I will be sorting through all the responses over the next few days and post an updated list accordingly. Please bear with me!

So, we're into the final countdown before the Rottnest Channel Swim on Saturday 20th February. We have a total of 71 swimmers from the squad competing across the three categories - SOLO, DUO and TEAM.

Looking forward to this week then and to help you in your planning for which sessions would be appropriate to attend if you are tapering down to the event:

MONDAY:

7am = a nice, cruisey drill & technique session - the perfect way to start your week!

9.30am = a slight variation to the normal endurance / technique session in that we'll add a short element of "fresh & fruity" today and effectively swap the steadier Monday session to Wednesday so as to not leave you too tired before the event.

TUESDAY:

5.30am, 6.30am and 6.15pm = a slight variation to the normal endurance / technique session in that we'll add a short element of "fresh & fruity" today and effectively swap the steadier Tuesday session to Friday so as to not leave you too tired before the event.

WEDNESDAY:

5.30am = a 15 mins stretch session, followed by a 60 minute swim perfect for those competing in the Rottnest Channel Swim, followed by another 15 mins stretch session - all done by 7am. This session will be with Nicola again this week.

5.50am = I will be taking out a group for a tempo bike ride session this morning at Shenton Park targeted specifically at HIM competitors - hope to see you there if you can make it.

9.30am = a steadier session today similar to what we'd normally do on a Monday at 9.30am.

THURSDAY:

6am = open water skills session at Cottesloe Beach. This will be a very light session for those competing at the weekend. Please note that due to the ever-reducing light at this time in the morning, today's session will be the LAST OPEN WATER SKILLS SESSION AT THIS DAY / TIME. PLEASE WATCH THIS SPACE FOR AN ALTERNATIVE SESSION GOING FORWARDS.

6/6.15pm = some 1500m intervals tonight at our new north Lake Monger venue. We're still trying to build a few more numbers for this session, so if you know of anyone who would like to attend, please bring them along.

NB. I would highly recommend a day-off today for SOLO and DUO swimmers in particular, but if you really want to roll your arms over, then the 6am session will be suitable for you also.

FRIDAY:

5.30am, 6.30am and 9.30am = an absolutely perfect loosen-off / taper session for the Rottnest Channel Swim today, including some stretching and short intervals to ensure you don't go into tomorrow's event feeling lethargic. All too often people take the day before a big event off and then complain about lethargy during the event - my motto has always been to have the day before, the day before off and doing something light and loose in the 24 hours before the event.

NB. SOLO swimmers should NOT swim at 4.30pm today...you'll be in bed, right?!

SATURDAY:

Race Day! Please note, there will be NO 1pm squad swim session today at Claremont Pool!

HIM competitors not involved in the race should do a 3h30 ride down the Freeway Bike Path followed by a 20' run off the bike at HIM pace. Suggested meeting point and time is 6.00am from the Bell Tower.

SUNDAY:

Rest Day!

NEXT WEEK:

All sessions back to normal, including the continuation of Monday's 7am session for those who'd like to loosen-off after the Rottnest Swim. Stay tuned for further news on squad allocations and the Thursday morning swim in due course - thanks!

GOOD LUCK!

The TEAM CORE would like to wish the following swimmers the best of luck for Saturday - got get 'em! 

NB. Apologies if I've missed anyone out from this list...please let me know if I have so that I can follow your results on the day.

SOLOS:

Suzanne Narbey, Geoff Wilson, Michael Abdo, Andrew Hunt, Andrew Stocks, Ceinwen Williams, Julien Flack, Hannah McKerchar, Vaughn Bisschops, Mary-Anne Paton, Mark Scanlon, Justine Murphy, Lisa Delaurentis, Justin Palmer.

DUOS:

Trevor Magee, David Reeve, Paul Downie, Chris Foley, Michelle Newsome, Paul Newsome, Natalia Vollrath, Suzanne Williams, Erez Berman, Nimal Wickramasinghe, Serena Wells, John Annear, John Edwards, Kim Smith, Adam Mullens, William Moody.

TEAMS:

Jeremy Buttsworth, Emmy Poulsen, Robyn Ahern, Sarah Humphry, Tim Humphry, Bevan Lawrence, Liz Dundas, Annette van Hazel, Guy van Hazel, Michael Fischer, Amanda Nitschke, Adam Young, Ian Klaasens, Cath Fletcher, Elise Gray, Courtenay Harris, Jackie Steinepreis, Paul Merson, Riaz Khan, Carl Andrews, Marina Wallace, Patrick Hollingworth, Chris Pemberton, Felicity Bailey, Melissa Cooney, Kristy Fogarty, Chris Murphy, Ian Crisp, Dan Fogarty, Bill Carmody, Julie Kerr, Joe Kierath, Georgina Good, Louise McGown, Caitlin Hunt, Jen Newman, Liza Magennis, Vera Sistenich, Katrina Mercer, Keith Anderson, Desiree Silva.

Cheers

Paul




Friday, February 12, 2010

A note on numbers...

Dear TEAM

Hope you've all had a productive week.

I just wanted to mention the numbers situation after this morning's
530am session. As you know it was incredibly busy in this session and
we had to make a couple of adjustments to the lane structure as a
result. It looked like we'd be able to keep the 4th lane there for a
moment which did help manage things a bit but then the Dolphins turned
up and as it is their booking we had to retreat to 3 lanes as normal.

You may recall that back in August we managed to secure a 4th lane in
the 630am session which was put in place to balance out the demand for
the sessions. However, for the last two weeks a few people have
drifted from their 630am allocated time to the 530am session which
culminated in this morning with quite a bit of stress on the lane
space availability.

In response to a Blog at the end of January stating that numbers were
a bit low and that there was potentially some space in some of these
sessions, I only heard back from three of you specifically requesting
the swap.

It is really great to see so much interest in the squad, but we need
to do our best to manage the interest as much as possible and require
your help and assistance with this. We are confident that the PAYG
card system is enjoyed by most of you for it's flexibility and value
but may have to look towards putting in place a monthly fee as an
alternative and easier to manage system. It's a bit of a catch 22
situation as I'm sure you can understand.

So here's my suggested action points:

1. Please have a check of the comfirmed list here http://theteamcore.com/images/Confirmed_Squad_List.pdf
and make sure you are on the right list. If not, please email me
with the corrections. Three of you have already done so and need not
repeat this. This is on a strict first come best dressed scenario.

2. If you have any strong feelings either way on how the 530am session
was handled this morning, please, please let us know. We need this
feedback.

3. Please let me know your thoughts on a monthly fee and whether or
not this would work for you. Again, I really want to ensure that
everyone is having a fun session, learning lots and keeping fit in a
nice environment without feeling overcrowded.

Please remember, we can always look at additional sessions during the
week if we think this will help matters.

Thanks everyone for your support and understanding on this matter. I
think any business goes through it's growing pains and we really value
your feedback to help us create the very best environment in which to
train.

Have a great weekend! Oh, and on a lighter note, read on below:

Thursday, February 11, 2010

It finally happened...

Dear Team

I thought this little story of my misfortune today might brighten up
your Friday afternoon!

My speciality area within the coaching world as many of you know is
1-2-1 Video Analysis and Stroke Correction. I love this opportunity to
spend some quality time with a single swimmer showing them what it is
they need to improve. Since we launched Mr Smooth last July, these
sessions are proving more and more popular and I'm currently fully
booked for the next 9 weeks. It's a real chance for me to draw upon
now 14 years of experience doing these sessions and helping people
enjoy their swimming more.

I'm often asked if I've ever fallen in the pool whilst concentrating
on the task of filming a variety of different angles above and below
the water. The answer is always a very proud "no". I'm sorry to say
though that as of the 11th February 2010 I can no longer make this
claim!

Talk about embarassing! There I was with a pool full of school kids,
the West Australian Junior Womens Synchro Squad and a client whom I've
never met before who was treated to the session as a Christmas
present. I had to use the water polo pool for the session as my usual
lane 8 had been allocated elsewhere. Using the polo pool poses some
additonal problems, namely the obstacle of the three diving boards and
fixings. So there I am merrily conducting my favourite session when
"whoops!" I clip my heel and experience that odd time-stopped
sensation where you know you cannot do anything to stop yourself
falling over! I made a spectacular splash into the pool, fully clothed
and with all my equipment, narrowly missing landing on top of the
swimmer! I think he was as shocked as I was! The synchro girls
obviously found it absolutely hilarious but of course I had to act
like nothing had happened - a tough task when you're soaking wet, have
no towel or change of clothes and are unfortunately wearing a pair of
white Capri pants (I like to think of them as sun-bleached-beige) over
black boxer shorts. I had no choice but to drip dry throughout the
whole session with no top or shoes on - nightmare! You have to laugh
though, right?

Luckily though the session went well and I'm hopeful that the only
thing damaged was my ego!

Have a fun weekend and stay away from the pool edge - dangerous place
that! ;-)

Paul

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Training and Racing this Weekend

Dear TEAM

A humid change this week - quite nice this morning on the bike I have to say!

OK, looking ahead to this weekend, the big events are the Leighton 1.6km Swim Thru on Saturday, and the Hillary's Sprint Triathlon / the Herne Hill 40km Time Trial event. Highly recommend having a little bash at the 40k Time Trial if you are doing the Busselton Half Ironman. You can enter that here: www.atta.asn.au

OK, so training then:

THURSDAY:

6am = open water skills session at Cottesloe Beach - what better way to start a Thursday?!

6pm for a 6.15pm start = run session at Lake Monger (meeting at the Green Arrow)

FRIDAY:

5.30am & 6.30am = get Fresh & Fruit with us at Claremont Pool

9.30am = nice steady, technique session

4.30pm = Rotto SOLO (final Friday swim)...just do a really steady, continuous 3km roll-over-of-the-shoulders today!

SATURDAY:

7am = Rottnest SOLO, DUO AND TEAM swim session at Trigg Beach. Meeting at the Trigg SLSC at 7am for an in-the-water start at 7.15pm. Please bring a paddler if you have one. TEAM swimmers = 2km, DUOS = 4-6km, SOLOS = 6-8km...all VERY cruisey indeed! A bit of a social wind-down followed by breakie at the Trigg Island Cafe. May cut this shorter if people are looking tired etc.

NB. No official ride this week as my suggestion is to do the Time Trial on Sunday. If you don't fancy that, take a spin down the Freeway bike path and input 3 x 20' intervals at HIM pace on your tri bars with 5' easy between each. Total ride time ~3hrs. Try a short 10' run off the bike too!

1pm = Squad Swim at Claremont Pool - come and have some fun and get VERY fruity with our open water skills and drafting session - miss it, miss out!

SUNDAY:

Valentines Day - ladies, please don't forget to send me a card - LOL! ;-) Seriously, have a great, fun day with your loved one(s).

Cheers

Paul





Monday, February 8, 2010

Recommendations for the final run-up to Rottnest!

Dear Swimmers

If you are searching for inspiration and direction for your run-up to the Rottnest Channel Swim 2010, may I suggest you have a look at some of my suggestions from last year which are still current for this time around:


Above all though guys and girls, I think the big thing that came out of the Rottnest meeting last Friday at Suzanne's house was that a) you are all fighting fit and raring to go; b) you cannot get any fitter now, but you can over-cook it in these last few weeks which will be detrimental (now's the time to ease off); c) don't make any drastic changes - you have all survived (well) on the longer swims, so don't go making any drastic changes to your nutrition plans please (see the Placid.pdf document for some good Menu suggestions as discussed on Friday).

As for this week, SOLO swimmers should swim as normal, doing the double on Tuesday (today) - normal Wednesday, Thursday and then just a single session on Friday. I will send out details of this Saturday's swim later on in the week, but it'll be at Trigg Beach at 7.00am and we'll do a ~6-8km swim on this day (cruisey) depending on how you're feeling.

And, if I can give you one final tip, let it be this - keep hydrated and plenty of early nights!!! ;-)

Cheers

Paul




Friday, February 5, 2010

Have your say!

Dear Swimmers,

After the highly successful (but brutally challenging!) 50 x 50m swim
set this morning sprinting any lap number divisible by 3 or 5, I've
happened upon a bit of an idea and I hope you're going to like it...

Today's set was actually put forward by James Forbes in lane 3
(5.30am) with a couple of minor tweaks by myself. I thought it worked
really well and added a bit of variety to the program. It certainly
kept me and Adam busy on the pool deck trying to keep you all pumped
up and you all succeeded very well with the challenge. Well done!

This leads me onto the idea. On the first Friday of every month I will
be accepting session ideas from within the squad. You can put forward
a session idea (main set) any time during the month (just email it
please) and we will review them all, pick one, add a sprinkle of Swim
Smooth MAGIC and serve it up for you to all enjoy!

So, get your thinking caps on, be creative and let us know what you'd
like to do. Can I suggest that the longest interval should be no more
than 300m given that this is supposed to be a speed orientated session.

Have a great weekend!

Paul

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Training this Weekend

Dear TEAM

Please be advised of the next few day's worth of training:

Thursday AM = meet at just before 6am at Cottesloe Beach for a super-fun openwater skills session - must be able to swim 200m continuously, but above that we cater for a large range of ability.

Thursday PM = meet at the toilet block shown here in the car park to the north side of Lake Monger for an interval run session at 6pm for a 6.15pm w/up start (easy access off the Freeway north at Powis Street). Need to assess numbers and interest for this session, so if you're keen, please pop along! This is a paid-for session using your PAYG card.

Friday AM = 5.30am, 6.30am and 9.30am sessions all running as normal.

Friday PM = for the 4.30pm SOLO swimmers, if you can make it, we're going to do a fun rough water swim at Trigg Beach. Please meet at the Trigg SLSC tower at 4.30pm for a 4.45pm start. If you get there a little late, run down the beach and find us...we'll be swimming south into a screaming sou-westerly with any luck! We'll then see you for the BBQ in Floreat from 6.30pm.

Saturday AM = HIM athletes should do route # 1 from the program up into the Kalamunda Hills. Meet at 6.30am from the Bell Tower if you can make it.

Rottnest swimmers should enter the Cottesloe to Swanbourne 2.2km swim which starts at 8am prompt and registration is from 7-7.45am. The SOLO / DUOS should then swim back as well (cruisey). My favourite open water race of the season!

Saturday PM = 1pm pool squad session = openwater skills and drills in the pool that are bound to get you pumped! ;-)

Sunday = Busselton jetty swim anyone?

Cheers

Paul

P.S A massive congratulations to Renee Baker who raced awesomely well last weekend at the Perth Olympic Distance triathlon and qualified for the World Championships in Hungary next year - top notch! I didn't get down there unfortunately (computer woes sadly enough!) so if anyone else raced and would like to let me know how they went, please do so!

P.P.S If you were at the briefing for the Rottnest Channel Swim event on Tuesday night you would have received the handbook to the event. I am very proud to say that Adam's photograph of me swimming past the 10km mark in last year's SOLO event made the front cover - thank goodness you can't see how much I'm hurting! ;-)


Canada / UK Photos

Dear TEAM

Hope you are all doing well this fine Wednesday afternoon!

I realise that our family photos may have no interest to you whatsoever and I apologise if this email is one extra for your inbox that you didn't really need on an afternoon! If this is you, please accept my sincere apologies.

However, quite a large number of you suffered my "travel babble" whilst I was away and said you enjoyed wincing at some of the incidents, reading about what it was like to travel with a new baby and so I thought you might be keen to view some of the photos from the trip and to also "hear" Jackson's side of the story in his own little Blog which we've been running since he was born as a nice way to keep friends and family over-seas posted on our "progress" over here in Perth.

Here's the link to the Blog...there's 800 photos there (!), but for my fellow Poms I think you'll be amazed to see just how much snow there was in the 2nd webpage album.

Enjoy, or please just delete (making sure you have read the note about the Rottnest BBQ this Friday first - below). Thanks!

Paul & Jackson





Rottnest Solo and Duo informal social BBQ this Friday in Floreat!

Dear Swimmers

If you've been training with the squad for the Rottnest SOLO or DUO events and have endured all the miles along the way etc, please be invited to an informal social BBQ this Friday evening 5th February from 6.30pm. Suzanne has kindly offered to host the BBQ which will be held at 85 Newry Street, Floreat. Please bring meats and drinks (yes, alcohol IS allowed!) and we'll get some salads etc organised.

This will be an excellent chance to discuss "tactics", ask any final coaching and nutritional questions and to basically get you pumped up for the event - we might even watch "Rocky 2" and all chant "Eye of The Tiger" or some such daft thing! LOL!

Please let me know if you and your husband / wife / partner etc plan to come along - it'd be great to see you there!

Cheers

Paul