University of Minnesota Athletics
Hawaii Blog #2 from Jakub Maly
1/10/2015 12:00:00 AM | Women's Swimming & Diving
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Yesterday was one of the most beautiful days we had so far here in Hawaii. While Terry's, Ryan's and Steve's groups are done with the morning swim practice by 8am and spent most of the time between practices catching some sun on the beach, Kelly's group enjoys waking up little bit later and swimming in the sun from 9:30-10:30am.
After a very hard first week of practices among all groups, everybody got the entire Sunday off. Most of us used this opportunity to spend the day as a team at Waimea Bay. Unfortunately, the weather wasn't great, but we were able have some great time together as a team, breakfast at Kono's and a stop at the Dole plantation for the best pineapple ice cream on the way back. Some of us even woke up earlier and visited the Arizona Memorial and the Missouri Battleship in Pearl Harbor before going to the North Shore.
The eventful weekend passed very quickly and we jumped back to the pool on Monday morning. The coaches decided to make us as tired as possible before the dual meet against University of Hawaii on Wednesday. While the sprint groups were doing some of their traditional stand-up sets, Ryan's middle distance group swam a 9,000 yards practice for their first time and Kelly's group continued to keeping up the yardage while doing some of the most challenging aerobic and pacing sets.
On Wednesday, everybody got the chance to sleep in a little bit before we all drove to swim a meet against the University of Hawaii. Unlike the past meets this season we did a team warm-up which was led by Gideon. Luckily everybody survived his warm-up set with a ton of breath control, and we are able to start the meet at 11 a.m. This meet was great chance to practice competing outside. The groups practicing at Punahou were enjoying the warm water of the U of H pools since the heating at Punahou is broken and the water temperature was described to me as "pretty chilly" or "freezing".
After the meet, the entire team drove over to Makapu'u for a team dinner. The dinner was a typical Hawaiian Luau on the side of the Sea Life Park Hawaii (where 50 First Dates was filmed). Once we checked in, the girls took many pictures trying to capture the unique moment in their beautiful dresses while the guys patiently waited. We were let in at 5pm and had a chance to try many traditional customs, like making a fire or spear throw before the dinner started. After a great all-you-can-eat barbeque we witnessed an awesome evening show including many traditional dances, a live band, and a fire show.
Thursday and Friday were two days full of hard practices. Steve's sprinters are joining Kelly's distance guys and IM'ers at University of Hawaii for a hard relay stand-up set and Ryan's middle distance group will swim a stand-up set at Punahou tonight. Those who survive until Saturday noon will be rewarded with a day and a half off including a second team dinner on Saturday. May the pace clock be with us.
Players Mentioned
