A Day in the Life: Kelly Reitz, Day 3

WEST LAFAYETTE, Indiana, November 30. HALFWAY through her "A Day in the Life" series, Kelly Reitz checks in from West Lafayette, Ind., where she will compete in the U.S. Open.

Wednesday, November 29, Day 3
Today was the first time I have trained in a long course pool in a while! It took the first 800 warm up swim to get the kinks out of my body from the travel, and get used to the distance of the pool. So, that first 800 did not feel good! The pool was also uncomfortably crowded. None of my sets were on intervals because of the space constraints. I did my best to jump into spaces between swimmers to avoid sitting on the wall for too long. The number of people in warm up didn't surprise me; however, it did give me a greater appreciation for the extra space in the lane that I have back at William and Mary during practice.

My stroke did feel good though! I'm really excited for my race tomorrow. My weakness is in my pullout, but hopefully with only two walls in the 100, I can minimize that weakness and have a fast swim.

Here is my workout from the day:
800 swim
600 kick/swim
3 x 200 drill breaststroke/ swim freestyle
6 x 100 swim, descend 1-3 and 4-6
8 x 50 Build
200 easy drills/work on pullouts
4 x 25
#1: build up
#2: build down
#3: easy
#4: fast
3 x starts and breakouts from the blocks

Away from the pool, the day started early at 7 a.m., and my fabulous housemates woke up to wish me good luck! The flight left at 9:25 a.m., and my teammates and I got there just in time. I don't really like the taking off and landing parts of flying and both of the flights today were short, so it was mostly taking off and landing. Fortunately, during the second flight from Philadelphia to Indianapolis, I got in a short nap. Upon landing in Indianapolis, we realized that we still had a considerable amount of traveling to do, but luckily no one lost their luggage on the flights! We had to wait a really long time to secure a couple of rental cars, and once we did we were ready to hit the road.

Coach Jason [Memont], the assistant coach at W&M, got a Jeep Commander of which he is so proud. Luckily, I got to be co-pilot on the drive to Purdue University. This meant I had control over song selections, air temperature and lunch location…well sort of. We made it to the hotel in one piece, and it was not as sketchy as our hotel for the U.S. Open last year and that was a welcomed change! Then, we went to the pool and got our credentials and goody bags with multiple water bottles. The facility is beautiful and it'll be a great setting for a fast meet.

We finally went to dinner, and I was so hungry that I drank about four glasses of water before my meal arrived. But, don't worry I still finished that too! After dinner, we picked up some essentials from the local Wal-Mart like bagels, water and shaving equipment. I am so excited to shave, and I love the feeling after you shave for the first time in a long time. Getting between the sheets never felt better to my legs! I'm headed to bed now and visions of fast swimming will be dancing in my head.

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