Training Camp: COMPLETED

The NZ olympic swim team and I have now arrived home from swim camp last night.  I spent the last 18 days doing a very heavy workload of training in Cairns, Australia.  We trained 3 times a day alternating 3 times in the pool each day to 2 times in the pool and once in the gym.  It was very hard work but was very easy to be motivated knowing the olympics are now only a few weeks away!  We were initially supposed to travel to Canberra after our two week block of training camp to race at the Australian Grand Prix and then fly home today.  This was very quickly changed on the last day of training camp due to a couple of the Australian waterpolo team (training out of the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra) were carrying whooping cough.  The Australian swim team called off the meet as they did not want whooping cough to be caught by any members of their team or other competitors at the grand prix meet.  The NZ coaches looked at all our options and decided to try their best and make a bad situation good and decided to stay in Canberra until we were able to fly straight home to NZ on Saturday.  They divided our team of 16 swimmers into two teams of 4 girls and 4 boys.  We had a very exciting and competitve duel meet at the pool we had been training in, competing in many different races to sore points for our team.  It was really fun but also very hard at the same time due to all of our bodies being totally shattered from training camp.

I am now home for two weeks, leaving again on the 10th of July for pre-camp in Belgium.  I am starting to get very excited now that training camp is complete.  It all went very well so my last couple of weeks of preparation will hopefully continue to go perfectly to ensure I am representing my country as best as I can.  The 4x100 freestyle team has been officially confirmed for the Olympics so I will definately be racing that race on the first day of competition, 28th of July.  Looking forward to these final stages of preparation as they are always the most enjoyable.  Very excited for the weeks ahead.