Sunday, June 7, 2009

An International Experience

Hello!

As all of you may know, we all competed in an international swim meet this weekend. For many of us this was our first international meet and it was an amazing experience. Seeing the different swimmers from all around the world, the different techniques and the way they were as a team was remarkable. Although we were not the fastest at the meet, it was a good learning experience. And it was neat to see some of the best swimmers in the world compete. Many of us had a chance to talk with some of them, including Cullen Jones, Cesar Cielo, Mark ( i dont know how to spell his last name), and many of the others. Getting advice from them was awesome. At the end of the meet the Australian Coach talked with us about who he has coached and what type of swimmers they were, dedicated and very self-confident. Cullen told us some of his techniques he uses at practice when he wants to go faster and how emotion really controls how you swim.

On top of seeing the best in the world compete and getting advice from them, I think we all had a really good time. Many of the girls had quite a time "sightseeing", if thats what you would like to call it, at the meet and I know the guys did that as well. There were some good races and some bad but the whole point of the meet was a learning experience and seeing how the fastest in the world swam. Getting into warm ups this morning, which I might say is a very hard thing to do with a million people swimming in only 8 lanes and many of them much bigger and scarier, I realized that although we weren´t the fastest at the meet and there were many others much faster than us and did not know who we were, we were all there doing the same thing: trying to swim at our best and be better than before. All of us, from around the world, were in the same pool trying to achieve the same goal (becoming better, faster) which when you look at it that way I think it is a very neat thing.

I have had a blast so far and am sad that our last days are approaching. We are going to the Cathedral and the beach tomorrow! It should be another fantastic day! Hope all is well! And see you soon!
Adios
Taylor

No comments: