Apologies and Weekend's Activities

Dear Athletes

Please accept my apologies if you received multiple emails from me this morning. In an effort to streamline my workflow I inadvertently added to it dramatically with a new email system - c'est la vie!

Anyhow, onto this weekend:

Saturday:

0630 - ride from the Bell Tower - an EASY lap of the river for the Half Ironman Crew.

0745 - meet at Cottesloe Beach for our Rottnest swimmers for a 4.4 to 8.8km steady ocean swim.

1300 - meet at Claremont Pool for our squad swim session.

Sunday:

REST!

Enjoy!

Paul

Congratulations to all Rotto Solo Swimmers!

Dear athletes

The TEAM CORE would just like to congratulate the following prospective Rottnest Solo Swimmers for their completion of the 10km Rehearsal Swim on Sunday or pre-qualification for the event on the 21st February:

• Ceinwen W
• Justin M
• Emmy P
• Paul D
• John E
• Paul N
• Amanda N
• Sally S
• Andrew H
• Wayne S
• Laurent
• Sylvain
• James A

Well done groovers and good luck to you and all our duo and team swimmers also - its going to be a great day!

Cheers

Paul

P.S Training back to normal as of today - hope you all had a great Long Weekend. Don't forget our new Squad Swim Session on Tuesday nights at 7pm (starting tonight!)

New addition to the pooldeck!

Dear athletes

In order to help really smooth-out the running of our squad sessions
you'll be interested to know that we have invested in a digital
poolside clock as beautifully modelled here by Adam!

Each session the clock will be synchronized with the main analogue
clocks at Claremont Pool but will be located near the 5m flags on the
side of lane 8 so will be much easier to see.

For those of you fairly new to structured squad swimming, this will
allow you to carefully set yourselves off exactly 5 or 10 seconds
apart (as advised by the coach) to ensure you don't all bunch up in
the lanes, which often causes frustration for everyone. Normally we
will help set you off for the first repetition, but we are hoping that
with the new clock in place you'll get more accustomed to managing
this yourselves which will free up additional time for us to get your
splits, help you with your stroke technique or maybe just take a break
and go for a coffee! Joke!

Interestingly enough, in a lane swimming ~1:40 per 100m, it would (in
theory) be able to have at least 18 swimmers working smoothly together
if this way! Don't panic though, we're not going to go that way,
however it does highlight how it's possible to work this efficiently
with a good setting off procedure.

We hope that you will start to make good use of this new tool!

Have a great weekend!

Australia Day and the TEAM Sprint Cup!

Dear Athletes

Just a reminder that there will be no official training sessions running on Monday 26th January due to Australia Day. We will resume with morning squad sessions on Tuesday 27th January from 5.30am. Athletes following our HIM program know what they have to do from the Program Overview (remember, next week is a recovery week for you guys!).

Over the weekend we have the following available:

• Saturday 630am ride from the Bell Tower. Aim this week will be to split up into two groups based on ability, i.e. a 'fast' group and a 'fastER' group! Suggested route is this one: http://www.mapmyride.com/ride/australia/perth/725400896 
• Saturday ~8am Sorrento Beach 1.25km and 5km ocean swims - see www.wa.swimming.org.au for more details
• Saturday 1-2pm Squad swim session at Claremont Pool - lots of fun, try and make it down!
• Sunday ~8am Sorrento Beach 2.5km and 10km Rotto Rehearsal swims
• Monday ~8am 2km Australia Day Swim at Scarborough or the Australia Day triathlon at Pt. Walter (www.allbarnone.com)

Also, last year, 8 of the squad took part in the Team Sprint Challenge (http://www.teamsprintcup.com/entryform.php) at Christchurch GS. This year the event is on the 15th February. It was a lot of fun. Anyone keen to participate, please email me back. Photos of last year's event can be found at: http://www.theteamcore.com/Photo%20Gallery/Team%20Sprint%20Cup%2008/index.html

Have a great weekend and "throw another shrimp on the barbie Sheila!" LOL! ;-)

Kind regards

Paul

Paul Newsome

Head Coach

www.swimsmooth.com

www.theteamcore.com

World Class Coaching in Your Language!

Tel. +61 (0) 431 540 980

Tuesday Swim Confirmation and Rotto Nutrition Chat on Friday

Dear All

Just confirming that we shall proceed with the NEW Tuesday evening swim session at Claremont Pool, every Tuesday, from 7-8pm, starting Tuesday 27th January and running up to the Busselton Half Ironman on the 2nd May. This will be a steady aerobic session focussing on technique (similar to Tuesday early mornings). We have the following 15 people having registered their names:

Carly Innes

Chris Murphy

Deb Meyerhofer

Gabe Alves

Helen Cuthbert

Helen Masson

Karlee Cannon

Mark McNally

Matt Illingworth

Mel Cooney

Natalia Vollrath

Nathan Thomson

Nimal Wickramasinghe

Stuart Murray

Tim Cooney

If your name is not on that list but you'd like it to be, we will now open up the 9 remaining spots to anyone who wishes to register, irrespective of if they are training for the Half Ironman or not. Please let me know ASAP.

FRIDAY NIGHT NUTRITION CHAT:

All Rottnest swimmers from the squad who would like to attend a social gathering to discuss and share nutrition tactics / experiences for the Big Day on the 21st February are welcome to attend our little soiree on Friday  23rd January at 6pm at 11 Hammersley Road, Cottesloe. Please bring your own drinks and maybe a plate of nibbles. We'll discuss tactics and formulate a plan which can also be used on Sunday at the Rotto Rehearsal Swim for practice. We may then venture down the road for some supper at ~7pm. Thanks to Emmy for offering her place for this occasion! RSVP to paul@swimsmooth.com 

Kind regards

Paul

Tuesday night swim session!

Dear athletes

It is with much pleasure that I inform you that Claremont pool have
given us the go ahead to use 3 lanes in the 50m pool every Tuesday
evening from 7-8pm as of the 27th January.

We need a minimum of 15 people to make this session viable and first
refusal will go to those who have registered for the Half Ironman
Program.

The session will be ideal (but not exclusive) to those doing our Half
Ironman program and allow these athletes the chance to rest up early
on Tuesday morning after a hard days training on Monday. It will not
impact on your Wednesday morning ride but our recommendation is that
you aim to have a big lunch on Tuesdays followed by a lighter evening
meal BEFORE you come swimming so you can get home to bed asap.

There will be no showering facilities immediately after the swim so
please be prepared with a big fluffy towel and some warm clothing!

On the two occassions when we have scheduled a nutrition and bike
maintenance course at 6pm in the Sweat Shack on the Tuesdays in
February, we will rescedule and run these at 6pm down at the pool
immediately before the swim.

Please let us know asap if you wish to attend and which early morning
session (if any) you will swap your place from.

Kind regards

Paul Newsome
Head Coach
Tel +61431540980
www.swimsmooth.com
www.theteamcore.com
Multisport Coaching in Your Language!

Training this week

Dear Athletes

I'm still waiting upon reports from those who raced at the Waikiki Enduro this weekend, so if that was you, please let me know how you went!

Official results from the Xstrata Nickel Swim Thru Perth are not yet in, but we can confirm that coach Paul and Ceinwen picked up 1st prize in their respective age-groups and both had great swims. Also racing strongly were Wayne, Paul D, Andrew Hunt, Justin, Emmy (with a stormer!), Amanda and Sam. So all looking good at this stage for 21st February!

Onto this week....it's week # 2 of the Busselton Half Ironman Program and this week we will continue to build you steadily into the program. Gold and Silver athletes will be receiving their individual programs by the end of today FYI and then be able to communicate on how this last week has gone.

For the Rottnest Channel Swimmers within the squad, this week will be a RECOVERY WEEK. What's that you ask?! Chance to recuperate and rebuild for this weekend's Rotto Rehearsal Swim! Psychologically your head is probably saying "no, no, don't back down now, we're nearly there!" but physically your body is crying out for an easier week and you need to take it! Following this week we have just 2 more big weeks before we taper down to the event. This easy week is absolutely ESSENTIAL for a good race on the 21st. Accordingly, all duo / solo swimmers are advised to just attend just one squad session on Tuesday and Friday morning and supplement with an additional easy drill session of ~2km (4.30pm on Tuesday or Thursday is an option if you can make it to Claremont Pool then?). This will give you a weekly total of just 8-9km followed then by the weekend's races of 5 + 10km...more than enough this week! Please don't be tempted to do more, even if you are feeling great!

Lastly, as you know (and from the data we were collecting on Friday morning and via email), numbers at the squad sessions have really picked up post-Christmas. We are looking at a number of solutions to this, namely the possible (hopeful?!) addition of another squad swim session on a Tuesday evening, specifically for the Busso HIM squad. If this goes ahead (and we are awaiting confirmation) it will allow you an easy morning of recovery on the Tuesday after Monday's "big" training day. We'll focus on distance and technique appropriate to your race distance of 1.9km on the 2nd May. We'll keep you posted.

So, remember groovers as the Google boys say "don't be evil!", or rather, please be respective of your fellow squad swimmers on Tuesday and Friday this week as we aim to work on solutions for an ever-expanding TEAM CORE!

Thanks for all your support, it means a lot to us!

Paul