. July 2018 .
Hi there!
Welcome to July 2018. A busy time for the kids. A quiet time for us two!
Colorado
Sam and Jake (and most of the seniors in their swim team) headed up to Denver, Colorado for a couple of weeks. It was a swim training camp at altitude with a swim meet and some fun thrown in.
Denver is just over a mile high, so the air was a bit thinner for them.
The aim was to give them the experience of altitude training, while also having a 50m pool to train in for a decent amount of time. Apparently they trained every day for two weeks.
But they also did some cool stuff away from the pool.
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They went to a Demolition Derby one night.
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The Demo night sounded pretty full on. They had different categories - Cars, Camping Trailers, Trucks....
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OK....
Sam looks impressed.
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| Sam and Sara |
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| A team pic would be nice. We don't seem many of them |
They stayed at Northern Colorado University which sounded pretty well set up. Plenty of food, and the rooms were pretty nice. Even had a view!
They trained every day in the pool, and also did dryland training and had sessions with various experts and Olympic swimmers on nutrition, training, mental skills and a few other topics.
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| Dead ants? |
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| A real pool |
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| After the first week they had a swim meet at Denver University. Their times weren't the greatest, but that was expected given the altitude and the fact they had been training pretty hard out, as opposed to resting prior to a meet. |
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Killer squad.
This looks ominous!
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| Trained urban fighters.... |
Sam came back with a bunch of bruises on her legs. Needs to work on her concealment a bit more. They both had a ball though and want to go Paint Balling again on the next trip!
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| Another Team pic ... at Red Rock Canyon |
They did a few hikes while up there. Red Rock Canyon was one. Then they went to another and up into the mountains to find a lake - which they all had to swim in! They didn't swim for long because it was pretty cold! We have seen footage of them in the water. The footage is fairly brief, funnily enough!
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| Another team pic. Jake was lucky to make this one as he was way up the back there gathering some snow for one of his team mates. Living in the Caribbean, a couple of them haven't seen snow. |
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| White Water rafting was also a big hit! |
Sam assured us that she fell out.... first.
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Ooh look! Team pic!
This one at a BBQ at Coaches brothers house
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| Poser - the next Gaterade advert |
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| Just one more! |
They all had a great time away. It was probably the longest either of them had been away from home without their own parental supervision ('handbrakes'). But they survived and got a lot out of the trip.
They did have a sprint meet straight after they got back, but both Sam and Jake were only down to do one race in each of the two sessions. Their times were pretty good for those races though!
They have just left on another trip - this time to Tampa for a big US meet (ISCA). We're not sure that there will be any lasting positive effects from the altitude training but hope they do well! We'll report on that in August's issue.
Editor's note: We can report that both have clocked a couple of PBs over the first two days.
Randoms
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| Dave spotted Harry up in the beams of the patio the other week. Weird cat. |
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It took a while to realise why! This guy had climbed in and up and made himself at home.
Dave went out with the broom and after about a 40 minute wrestling match and several laps of the patio, managed to see him off the property. The buggers crap everywhere....
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| Enjoying a grey, but peaceful sunday without the kids! |
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| The sun did come out |
Diving
We hadn't been diving for a while, so took the opportunity to do that while the kids were galavanting around Colorado. This is a nice easy dive just down the road from our place. It's a little difficult to get to so not many people dive it, which is nice. Also there are a lot more fish than in some of the other sites.
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| Mr. Shrimp! |
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| The evil Lionfish. These things are a real pest. They eat a massive amount of baby fish, have no natural preditor and have had a devastating effect on a number of reefs around the region. Cayman is doing OK as it is legal to kill them here (and encouraged), and plenty of the restaurants will buy them off you for their menu. They taste alright too! |
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| This guy popped out for a bit of a stroll. He was actually pretty big! |
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| Dave's dinner - we didn't actually catch this one...and it's a Snapper anyway |
Well, that's about it. A fairly quiet, but nice month for two, and a busy fun time for the other two!
In August we'll even things up a bit.
The kids return from Tampa on Sunday. On Monday we all head away for a couple of weeks in Canada (Lethbridge & Calgary), with a few days in Bend (Oregon) afer that with some crazy Canadians...
We'll fill you in on that later!
