EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the second article in a series by Noblesville Swim Club seniors Brianna McBride and Rachel Tat about the club’s annual Senior Trip.
Rachel: Day 3. Let’s do this.
Brianna: This morning we headed to the pool at our usual time of 5:30. We started our classic set of 800 meter swims.
This set entails a variety of 800s including straight swimming, kicking, pulling, and of course the grueling 800 of our best stroke. Shout out to the breaststroke lane for pulling through!
And if that didn’t seem like a lot of work, just wait. We went to the nearby trail at Lake Mayer park and ran about one and a half miles around the lake and in the rain. We all finished at different times but did not fail to cheer on the ones finishing behind us. Just like when we are in the pool, we strive to make an more individualistic race into a team effort.
But wait, there’s more! After the run, we went straight into an ab workout that concluded with the traditional five-minute leg lift. We all pushed through as long as we could, but of course, with a task as intimidating as this one, only a few of us managed to make it through. But experiences like this one will only help us grow as long as we continue to move forward and improve.
I heard many people who could not do the whole duration of five minutes, encouraging and cheering for the people that could. I even heard some underclassmen make it their goal to work towards it for training trips to come, and being a person that didn’t make it my first year, this made me very happy to know my teammates were setting the same goals that I did.
After the long workout, the team headed back to the hotel for breakfast and some free time to wind down and prepare for the rest of our day.
Little did we know that what was going to be a tour of downtown Savannah, turned into an Amazing Race competition between previously organized teams. We separated into vans and headed to our first destination (mine was the Savannah History Museum).
The entire race was completed on foot, and if you wanted to win, you had to run. I could definitely feel the judgment coming from pedestrians as we frantically ran around downtown to the different locations from our clues. We briefly visited attractions like the Forrest Gump bench, the Waving Girl statue, the Savannah History Museum and Colonial Park Cemetery.
My team finished third of four.
And my team won! I remain undefeated in the annual Noblesville Swim Club Amazing Race.
After we calmed down from either winning or losing, we took a lunch break and headed to the hotel for some quick cat naps and recharging time.
We practiced for another two hours focusing on underwaters and medleys. It was a challenge, but definitely worth the struggle and effort.
Once practice was over, we (mainly the girls) rushed to get ready for our fancy dinner night out. We hit up Barracuda Bob’s for some delicious food and a little photo shoot after. The meal was very well deserved after our super long and busy day.
Back at the hotel we had a team meeting over our word of the day: grit. Having grit or perseverance is vital to achieve continuous improvement in our sport of swimming and all sports and aspects of life.
We can easily apply “grit” to everything we did today. We had to have grit to push through the 800s. We had to have grit to keep running through the Amazing Race. We had to have grit to finish through our second challenging workout. No matter what is thrown at us, we cannot have a fixed mindset. We must keep our minds open to believing in the work that we put in.
And we will continue to keep our minds open for the remainder of this trip. We only have one and a half days left of our vigorous training until we head to our meet. Stay tuned!
-Rachel and Brianna