Meredith McCarthy Shares Her Winter Training Experience

Meredith McCarthy is a junior with the Gopher women's swimming team. In her first two years at the Big Ten and NCAA Championships, McCarthy has made her mark with Gopher swimming. Earning All-America honors as a freshman with the 400 free relay, McCarthy followed with All-America honors with the 200, 400 and 800 free relay last year. McCarthy, along with teammates Christine Jennings, Yuen Kobayashi and Jenny Shaughnessy were first-team All-Big Ten and first-team All-Americans with the 800 free relay.

Winter Training Trip, January, 2008 by Meredith McCarthy
Most people might think that staying on a tropical island for 18 days would be the perfect way to spend a relaxing winter vacation, but when you are a member of the Minnesota women’s swim team, “relaxing” isn’t exactly the term I would use. This year we spent our winter break on a training trip in Kona, Hawaii. The weather was perfect, always sunny and around 80-85 degrees the entire time. Many people might be thinking, “Hey, sign me up for the swim team!” but we didn’t spend all our time simply lying around on the beach. Between our swimming schedules of two hour practices done in a double, double, single, then off pattern; lifting and cardio three times a week, and 45 minutes of extra dry land twice a week, any time between practices was spent recovering under the warm sun. But...it certainly wasn’t all work and no play.

Somehow despite the intense training schedule and the training itself everyone found plenty of time to explore the area and have fun. There was almost daily a group who would go for ocean swims between practices, following the Iron-man course from the starting point near our hotel. On these swims we were privileged to have the company of two of our coaches Kelly Kremer and Ryan “Scooter” Purdy. Yes they did swim, and it was impressive. One beautiful day a group of us decided to go out to one of the buoy markers. Once we got there some decided to turn back but Kelly and a few more of us wanted to go further. We made it out to the 1.2 mile buoy and could hear high-pitched dolphin sounds both above and below water. We had no idea where they might be, but it was awesome. Then Christine Jennings, our open-water champ, started swimming away, yelling at us and frantically waving her arms for us to follow. We sprinted over and saw a huge pod of Spinner Dolphins! The next thing we knew they were all around us, at least 50 dolphins swimming in smaller groups of 3-4! They were magnificent and some of the smaller groups even had baby dolphins, which would swim on top of another dolphin’s back. It was the most amazing experience of my life and I will never forget being able to dive down and swim alongside them. Even our coach Kelly, who is notoriously afraid of sharks, was able to simply enjoy the incredible time we spent with the dolphins free from any anxiety. After about 20 minutes they began to swim away leaving us with a sense of awe. Of course we were so excited to get back to the beach and tell our friends that we accidentally left Kelly behind, oops! There were two other occasions when some of us were able to see and swim with the dolphins and those are memories that will surely last a lifetime.

Besides the ocean swims there were also two team activities, a luau and a nice dinner, which gave our team a chance to enjoy each other and some great food. At the luau were entertained by the many different dances especially the unforgettable “couple’s dance”. Some of us learned the hula, others got “Polynesian” tattoos (done with genuine Sharpies), and we all got to see and eat a whole roasted pig (which was delicious!). Then of course there were the amazing beaches. At what we dubbed “Turtle Beach” we baked ourselves on the black sand and snorkeled out with the sea turtles, very cool, although one tried to attack Scooter (so he says). At the “Big Wave Beach” we played in the waves and got thrown around quite a bit. Wherever we went we always had a good time and for some reason caused a big stir. Now that I think about it though, it makes sense that large groups of (at first pasty) young women walking around, wearing training goggles and sometimes caps, carrying our own snorkels, sporting amazing suit tans, and wearing Minnesota attire would gain some notice. Or maybe it could be the numerous occasions when we spontaneously began singing the rouser, whether in between sets at practice, on the bus to go see a movie, or on the outrigger.

The outrigger...all I can say about our adventure in the big outrigger canoe is that I think both our coaches and our guides learned firsthand why the majority of us spend our time in the water and not paddling on it in a canoe. We struggled with actually digging into the water and paddling rather than “petting” it as Kelly described it. When we were told to switch sides (with our paddles) some were confused and thought it meant getting up, crossing over the mid-section of the boat and literally switching sides with our counterparts in the other canoe. Not the case. But we made it out, what seemed to be twenty miles and watched an amazing Hawaiian sunset.

Overall the trip was amazing, everyone trained harder than they have ever trained before and I think it is safe to assume that we also had more fun than ever before. By the end we were definitely all ready to return home only to find ourselves greeted by negative degree weather. The warm weather might have been left behind, but we came back in better shape than ever when we left, created new memories, and of course with fantastic tans!

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