Training Trip 2009: Northfield and Puerto Rico

So we got back from our training trip last Friday. As I explained before, it was a new format with one week in Northfield, one week in Puerto Rico and then 4 days after in Northfield again.
I thought I'd share about what it was like because it was a pretty different trip from the past two I've been on.

While we were in Northfield, the women's team and men's team practiced separately. While this was really good for Men's team bonding, it meant that we saw very little of the women in the pool. ALSO, since our practices would be after their practices (or vice versa), we never saw them for meals either. By the way, having like a floor to share a small burton kitchen sucks when everyone eats at the same time...

The captains put together some whole/gendered team events in the evenings like movies (Inglorious Bastards = Amazing), bowling night (HOLLER), ice cream sundays, etc. We also went to the house of a freshman who lives in Farmington. His mom cooked a metric-ass-ton of good food and their house had a pool table, sauna, hot tub, etc. It was awesome.

But I think the highlight of the evening activity line up was The Men's Team Vs. Women's Team Trivia Showdown. We all gathered in the 2nd Burton Lounge and battled it out in a game of trivia pursuit. Long story short... both teams got REALLY COMPETITIVE. During the last few turns, 2nd Burton was erupting in clapping, screaming, and laughing. The Men's team obviously dominated. Some girls took it poorly. (EX: One Junior girl, "Just remember which team is a Conference Champion...")

Other nights we just chilled in people's rooms or lounges, watching tv, eating and chillin out.

On the last night of the First Week, the night before we left for Puerto Rico. Some shit went down in terms of a select few who decided to drink. They were drinking because we had finished the Mac Meet earlier and we were leaving at 2:30am for the airport, which meant no morning practice. Well long story short, ResLife/ Security is a bitch and shut down a little gathering and took names of a few people. And that SHOULD have been the end of it. But it wasn't...

We get to Puerto Rico and are doing are thing down there, when in the middle of the week we get this email from Leon that he wrote to winter break athletes: (excerpt)

The party with the swimmers was broken up quickly and without incident. They weren’t so fortunate with the basketball party. Although the party itself was quickly disbursed, the building received considerable vandalism and damage (trash cans dumped all over the floors, broken window, a broken table, and food eaten out of the floor refrigerator). The RA on the floor and the resident who made the initial noise complaint also had harassing messages written on their doors.


The next morning at 5:30am, as we are meeting in the Lobby before heading to practice, Andy calls the people over and talks to them as everyone else heads to practice...

One way of looking at it: Andy wouldn't have known about it if we all hadn't gotten that email, and Leon wouldn't have sent the email if the BBallers didn't go crazy one night in Northfield.

Andy was pissed. We had a team meeting. Big talk about loss of trust and responsibility to each other. It was a damper on the day. There was some drama, because there were some people who were drinking, but somehow didn't get their names written down. Most eventually confessed to Andy. But afterwards, I was talking to Andy when everyone was clearly bummed and he goes "Aw common guys, I wasn't a perfect kid when I was in college either."

So there is still some fallout from that but for the majority of the team it's no big deal.

As for Puerto Rico, it was Puerto Rico. We stayed in a different area than from when the team was there 4 years ago. It was more touristy and there were no chickens anywhere. We didn't have kitchenettes, so we had to eat out everywhere which was expensive, but also fun. Eric Brenner and I (the thrifty bums we are) tried to not spend more than $100 dollars. But failed... BUT ONLY BECAUSE OF THE GOD DAMN AIRPORTS! It was okay though because we got a Stipend from the athletic dept. for the days we were in Northfield, which I carried over in PR. Overall I think I broke even. Which is awesome.

We had a half day off. Some people went snorkling, other went up to the rainforest (check out my pics if ya want, it was friggin awesome at the top), some went to a really nice beach, others checked out the old fort and an ambitious group went to the bioluminecent swamp/forest thing.

Back in Northfield, everyone was tired and broken down. We only had one day out of the almost three weeks of no practice and it was the travel day when we were up for like 24 hours straight, so it wasn't exactly restful. On the last day, we did a Pentathlon for our last practice and we had another team dinner, but at Perkins (classy, I know).

Overall it was a blast. The set up was interesting and Andy wanted our feedback on it. I liked the training in Northfield, but not coming back to it after going somewhere warm and training there. And Puerto Rico is nice, but the set up and conveniences of Ft. L are pretty nice.

And I'll leave ya with this.

A Dowist Perspective

So the term is over and for a few of us (sorry non-Carleton folks), winter break has started.

First, a few updates:

I think where I left off last was when the men’s team Tasted the Rainbow on Halloween. I said I was gonna write a whole post on it. But now I feel as if too late. I could probably write a whole novel on the night, although not from my perspective, which is missing completely… I’ll just say this: We started at 8 and I don’t remember anything after 9:45pm. 12 shots in an hour and a half is NOT a good idea, but hell I knew what I was getting into. We went through the rainbow, then did primary colors, then did our favorites. Allegedly, people were trying to make me drink water as early as 10:30 and I was two people I don’t know tried to take me home and put me to bed. I also know that I woke up at 5am in Davis 304 (Sjoberg’s current room) not knowing where I was, how I got there, or what was going on. I also felt great. But that is because of the massive purging that occurred around midnight…

So clearly the rainbow was a success.

On the last day of classes we had a flippy cup swim party at Dow. It started out with just the swim team, and then a jewgressive when through my house because of one of my housemates (the swimmers challenged them to a few rounds of flippy cup), and then all hell broke loose. The place blew up. It reminded me of that one party we had in the winter of last year in Stadium when the hall director came. Not only was it packed to the brink insider, there were probably about 100 people outside. The RAs kept wandering outside asking people, “Does anyone know who lives here?!” And supposedly the hall director came and was ignored by everyone she talked to. Security eventually came at 12:47 exactly and shut it all down. If you want to hear really funny stories, talk to Alfredo about this evening - you won't be disappointed.

Finals came and went. They sucked. Much of my time was spent on papers. But to give myself a pick me up in the middle of writing them, I would watch the video that Nonberg acted in for his friend’s project. Nonberg, your zombie walk made me laugh out loud so hard that some girl in the library asked me to keep it down or move to the 4^th floor. I recommend everyone watches it. It was so good that Mia and I thought we’d send it to btin.

Overall, I’d say this was my worst term at Carleton. But I won’t bore you about that. It mostly was because of my classes - very hard they were. But I think the fact that I had the best term of my life in the spring made this one seem worse than it really was. I do think that the living situation played a part as well. Living with swimmers is just so much easier. I think its the fact that everyone is on the same page and all. I’m very much looking forward to the break though, which is going to be much different than winter breaks past, mostly because of the difference in the training trip.

For those of you that don’t know, the team is doing something different in terms of winter break training this year.

Starting Monday of next week, the whole team (I think except for one or two people) is meeting back at Carleton to train. We are going to train twice a day for a week. Practices are 8-10 or 10-12 and 2-4 or 4-6. Morning practices are lift/swim (four days a week for sprinter and 2 days a week for distance) or all swim, and the swim is mostly technique based (filming, experimental stuff, etc). Afternoons are, as Andy put it to me one day when we were teaching SwimFit, “We are really gonna hammer you guys.”

OH! And practices are all gendered, which will be a fairly new experience for the team. It should be fun, since we don’t get that opportunity much during the normal season. But it also will be weird because we probably won’t see the women’s team during meals either, because we are cooking our own meals in the floor kitchens (because Bone Ape Tit isn’t open during the break).

So yeah, we are cooking our own meals. And because our room/board over the Northfield part of the training trip is covered by some fund from the Athletic Dept, we don’t have to pay for our food. The original plan was to have us buy all of our food and then give the business office receipts. Turns out, they are just gonna put the money ($22 a day!!!) directly in our checking accounts. And if we don’t spend it all, we get to keep it… Obviously, this part is awesome because I’m a thrifty/stingy asshole. We had a good chuckle about how if Jared was here, he’d be eating PB sandwhiches for the whole trip.

We also are going to go a Macalester Invite on the 5^th of Dec, which I’m glad about, because I have not been doing so well at meets this year and I want another opportunity before January.

Then we head to Puerto Rico! Group flight, which should be awesomely chaotic. In PR, we are practicing from 6-8 and then 3-5 and we gotta drive to the pool. The hotel we are staying at is a different one from when the team went before. This one doesn’t have kitchenetts – only a microwave and a minifridge (which should be interesting). But we do get like an amazing continental breakfast (with like omelets and stuff).

Then we all head back to campus and train like hell for 3 or 4 days until the 18^th, when we all go home for the rest of the break. Andy said those three days are gonna be the hardest of the whole time.

Should be a pretty cool time!

We’ll that’s all I really gotta say. I’ll leave ya with this.