A Day in the Life: Jill Snyder, Day 1

Today was our last day of holiday break for the semester, since classes start up tomorrow, and our last "holiday training practice" which is longer in time than our normal practices. We just returned from Fort Meyers Beach, Fla., this past weekend. Training in Florida was tough but it was just what we all needed. Some good hard work never hurt anybody.

Today's practice was tough because we haven't swum since Friday when we returned from our trip. Our coach decided to give us the weekend off since we trained so well in Florida. Our whole team is looking forward to our big meet on Friday against rival Bloomsburg University. The Bloom meet is one of my favorites because everyone gets so pumped up, and we really have some great swims against them. We are always battling them for position in our conference at our conference meet!

This week, we will all be focusing on getting ready for that meet. One thing that is so neat about Bloom and our conference is that we are all state schools within 4-5 hours of each other so many of us have swam against each other in high school or were even on the same team. It makes it so much more competitive and fun!

Today's practice looked like this:

warm up
400 swim, 200 kick, 200 pull, 200 swim, 200 kick, 200 pull, 100 swim

set 1
3 x 200 swim freestyle on the 2:25
2 x 75 all out free on the 1:45 or all out stroke on the 2:00
2x 50 all out free on the 1:15 or all out stroke on the 1:30
(repeat 3 times)

set 2
20 x 50 all out hard kick
10 with fins on the :55
10 without fins on the 1:10
set 3
1 x 125
1 x 75
1 x 25
(repeat 5 times)
rounds 1,3,5 were hard stroke – 1:50, 1:10, :30
rounds 2, 4 were hard freestyle- 1:40, 1:00, :25

set 4
8 x 150 pull with paddles on the 1:50

set 5
8 x 100 IM on the 1:25

warm down
12 x 50 on the 1:00

I really liked our first set today because it was a challenge to push the stroke swims after becoming fatigued on the 3 x 200s. Our kicking sets are always hard kick but short distances. I feel that this helps me to feel powerful with my kick. With only about five weeks until our [Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference] meet and just a little more than a month and a half until Division II Nationals, I am really trying to train the best I can at practice each day!

With the first day of classes starting up tomorrow, I am pretty much just relaxing and getting organized the rest of the day. We also have dryland tomorrow morning at 6 a.m., so I will be sure to get to bed early. I am looking forward to this semester because I will be teaching in an elementary school two of the five days out of the week. The remaining days, I will attend my classes. It will be a hectic schedule with swimming and traveling for meets and such, but I am really looking forward to it! I'll keep you posted on how the first day of classes went!!

Go Ship!