A Day in the Life: Andrea Hupman, Day 4

HONOLULU, Hawaii, December 13. IN the fourth installment of her "A Day in the Life" blog, Northwestern junior Andrea Hupman talks about a bikini-shopping run in Honolulu, the anticipation of an afternoon off to really enjoy the city and a yard set.

Tuesday, December 12, Day 4
Aloha! One of my favorite things about training trip is spending lots of time with my favorite girls doing all kinds of things girls love to do. Not to sound too stereotypical, but we sunbathe, we talk – and we shop. My favorite shopping trip so far was to a store that specialized in Brazilian bikinis. We each took handfuls of swim suits into the dressing rooms to try them on. Then we got to laugh at ourselves and each other in some of the crazy suits we tried on. We also got to vote on the ones we liked the best. Most of us ended up finding something we really liked and buying a new suit.

Today on the beach, we got to wear our new suits. Along with classic sunbathing, one of our favorite pastimes is taking lots of fun pictures. We got some group shots in the new beach wear. And lots of other fun ones, too!

We're also making friends with one of the pigeons on the beach. We were in the same place as yesterday, and the same white pigeon with light brown spots on his head came over to peck at our bags. He cocks his head to the left when he walks. And he is fearless! He comes so close you could reach out and grab him. But, we decided our friend probably wouldn't appreciate a hug. So we left him alone.

Everyone on the team is looking forward to tomorrow: our first afternoon off. We're planning to drive to a beach with some good body surfing waves (Waikiki has coral and surfers).

Practices today were pretty good. We lifted weights in the morning. Our morning swim was mostly aerobic. Our afternoon workout (short course yards) had some good sets:
24×25 @ :35 (4 kick, 4 swim; odds hard/easy, evens easy/hard)
200 stroke drill
5 x
{3×50 @ :40 (steady)
3×150 all hard, 2 rounds @ 1:50, 2 rounds @ 2:00, last round @ 2:10}

It was important on the last set to work to improve your average on the 150s as the amount of rest increased. I was swimming next to one of my sprint buddies, Emily Wong, who really stepped it up on the last round of 150s. Racing people in practice makes the sets more exciting and helps everyone improve.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow afternoon and having more fun things to write about!

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