A Day in the Life: Matt Lenton, Day 3

BLOOMINGTON, Indiana, February 10. IN the third entry of his "A Day in the Life" series on SwimmingWorldMagazine.com, Indiana University sophomore Matt Lenton writes about the development of team chemistry heading into conference championship season as well as former IU swimmer turned student coach Ryan Millard.

Friday, February 9, 2007, Day 3
Hi all,
I'd like to refer to today as the day of Milos. But I'll get to that later on.

This morning was another early one as I headed in for a wake-up swim of a 1000 easy just to wake my body up and shake it out.

I headed from the pool to my first class parking at the nearby dorms.

After my class, I was lucky enough to have my car towed (note the subtle hint of sarcasm here) which I was less than impressed about. I hurried to make my last class before coming home to ring around and find my car. 70 dollars later I was on my way to the pool.

Coach Donny Brush left us in the capable hands of coaches 'Wild' Kyle Hastings and Ryan 'Get Down and Dirty' Millard, aka Milos, to go and work with the women's team, who might I add are putting up a huge fight at their own Big Ten meet in Minnesota.

After some practical jokes and goofing around, this afternoon's workout began with 4 x 200's swim, kick, pull, swim, again working on body position and some light turn work. From there it was into 4 x 50's controlling my stroke rates and body position holding a certain time. From here it was into 200 and 4 x 25's both pull and kick. When I do my kick, I like to use my snorkel swimming 50 with big fins, 50 with zoomers, 50 without anything then 50 breaststroke kick to get the feeling back into my feet.

After I did some variable 25's including some 'get-up' butterfly as I prepared for my relays, I then went to 100 negative split before taking on the roommate Steffan 'Chuck Norris' Troxel and Steven 'The Machine' Murry in a 25m breaststroke, which I'm happy to report that yours truly rolled in. A 200 cool down later and I was done.

As I said earlier, I referred to today as the day of Milos. Ryan Millard, as said in a previous entry, is a former IU swimmer and is one of those guys who you can't help but like but also is extremely charismatic and possesses the power to motivate anyone. So much of the day was spent yelling, screaming and pumping up some of the other boys.

Some of the freshmen gents and IU's gentle giant 'Big Lee' Houchin were working starts and broken 100's while Ryan did his best to motivate them – and it obviously worked with all of them producing career bests.

Personally, I think at this point in the season it is very productive for all of us to be having fun on pool deck and goofing off as it creates a relaxed atmosphere and I've found that when people are relaxed, but focused, they swim their best. Today was a good day for team chemistry as everyone is relaxed and really starting to get behind each other and support them as we grow closer which is fantastic to see.

The rest of my evening was spent cooking, cleaning and watching a few movies before hitting the sack at a decent hour.

Matt

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