A Day in the Life: Sarah Groff-Palermo, Day 7-8

NEW YORK, New York, March 27. NEW York Masters swimmer Sarah Groff-Palermo concludes her run in the "A Day in the Life" series here on SwimmingWorldMagazine.com.

We would like to take a moment to thank her for her time in the series, and once again welcome any other volunteers to join the series. We welcome all swimmers of all abilities and ages to volunteer. Please contact Jason Marsteller if you would like to take a turn as a Day in the Lifer.

Monday and Tuesday, March 26-27, 2007, Day 7-8
My last entry is here and I thought I would up the value to you, Dear Reader, by including two days. Thanks for reading.

Monday was a rest day: I stayed home for the morning to unpack then went off to work to survey the damage done in my absence. This morning I was up at 5.30 again for practice, since Nationals is only eight weeks away. Both days provided plenty of opportunity to reflect and make plans.

While I spent Monday bragging to my non-swimming friends and basking in the warm glow of accomplishment (at least before realizing this means I have to swim fast again), our head coach helped us out by sending one of the nicer e-mails I've ever gotten. Not only did we all swim fast and walk around grinning like lunatics, but apparently loads of other teams noticed and were busy complimenting our coaches while we stuffed our faces. They also fielded tons of praise for our team shirts, which I forgot to mention are super. Not only is the Bauhaus-y font cute, but the slogan on the back is very resonant: People at the office think I am on vacation. It does seem that every time I go to a meet people ask how my vacation went and what I saw. Explaining that spending three days staring at a pool is all you really want to do doesn't always make sense to folks.

No matter. Today the first set of photos was sent around and soon we should be able to see the videos another teammate shot. (He got my 50 fly, so I am keeping tabs on this–it's the first time I've seen myself swim.) Everyone still seems a little giddy, though I noticed many did not show up for today's workout, in which a tiny amount of mercy was shown (not much). The main set was 4 x 500, two swim, two pull with paddles. That plus some drills and kicking gave us around 4200 meters.

Our coach has decided that I should stop breathing so close to my walls, and he is probably right, so that will be a big focus for the next two months. Right now I am integrating it into slower sets, with the idea being to continue to work it in till I am bad-habit free. I would also like to go back to working harder at practice. When I first began, I could barely make it through a practice and was always pushing hard. Now that I have gotten more comfortable, I have slipped into slacking off more than I ought to, like dragging off my lanemates instead of taking the lead. (I totally did not do that today.) With luck, we have a dual meet coming up, too.

So much to look forward to. Thanks again for reading.

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