Before sunrise on Dec. 9, Big Green swimmers and divers set off on a training trip to Puerto Rico, only a few hours after they finished competing in the Big Al Open hosted by Princeton University. The 10-day trip pushed athletes to work hard but allowed them to enjoy each other’s company in the sun — a bonding experience unlike any campus training.
The athletes began practicing the afternoon of their arrival at Sacred Heart University, in San Juan.
The trip was not a vacation. From Tuesday through Friday, the teams had two daily practice sessions, a significant increase from their scheduled workload during the academic term. Each day, the swimmers met in the lobby to leave for practice before 7 a.m.
The swimmers warmed up as a team and then divided into three groups — sprint, stroke and distance — to polish specific skills.
In the sprint group, the swimmers cycled through kicking, breath control and a high-intensity resistance station.
“We’d be belted into these resistance cords and we’d have to do a certain number of stroke cycles on a one-minute interval,” co-captain Natalia Vecerek ’14 said.
Sprinters also completed a broken swim, in which a standard 200-meter race is divided into four 50-meter swims separated by 10 seconds of rest.
In another exercise, they swam as fast as they could for as long as possible.
The distance group faced a grueling set of six 900-meter swims.
“The training was really tough, but it definitely got better as we went on and as we got used to it,” Cristiana Salvatori ’17 said.
The team also participated in an activity called King of the Hill. Each swimmer raced a set of 20 200-meter swims as quickly as possible, trying to achieving the lowest average time.
Aside from double practices, the team also had lift for an hour every other day.
“It was a lot of swimming, a lot of hard work,” said co-captain Christine Kerr ’14.
Team members recuperated between practices in ways foreign to Hanover’s frigid temperatures, like lounging by the hotel pool or napping on the beach.
But besides the grueling workouts, the trip allowed the team to bond quickly after a whirlwind fall.
One day between practices, athletes toured Old San Juan, and over the weekend, with only one workout session each day, the teams had ample time to relax together.
A day-long catamaran cruise took them to an island and later to a coral reef where they snorkeled for the remainder of the trip.
“It was beautiful, and it was so much fun,” Salvatori said, “and we had the afternoon off, which was a treat.”
A day trip to El Yunque, a tropical rain forest, filled Sunday afternoon. Swimmers hiked 1.4 miles to a waterfall, where they stopped to take photos and wade in the water.
Yet the next week, tours and other activities -— such as a team “date night,” exchanging holiday gifts and touring the Bacardi Rum factory — broke up the day’s four hours of training.
To celebrate the end of the trip on Wednesday night, the team dined together at Texas de Brazil, a Brazilian steakhouse. The final, full-group dinner has become a tradition on training trips, Vecerek said.
The next morning, swimmers congregated for the hardest practice of the trip, 100x100, where they swam approximately 6.2 miles nonstop in roughly two hours.
To head coach Jim Wilson, these touch workouts are just one benefit to team travel.
Swimmers had a chance far away from the regular Dartmouth grind to bond as a team.
“We claim it’s for training, we make it nice weather so everyone will want to do it, but it’s that bonding experience,” Wilson said.
Whether it was practicing in the pool or exploring the city, the team members spent most of the trip together.
“We did a lot of fun stuff together, but we also struggled through the hard parts together,” Salvatori said. “I definitely feel a lot closer to everyone, and I know everyone a little bit better.”
This experience can especially help freshmen acclimate to the team.
“The training trip is probably the time when they actually can really start to be fully integrated because during the fall the training is ridiculously hectic, and they’re getting accustomed to school,” North said.
Having a close-knit team is essential for competitions, where support from teammates can make a huge difference, swimmers said.
“This really pays off at the end of the season for us, which is our main competition, the Ivy Championships,” Wilson said. “When the team needs to pull together to do well, they’re able to do it because they know each other so well.”
For the team, the Ivy League Championship is the most important and most meaningful race of the entire year.
Swimming and diving members view other competitions as essentially practice for the culminating race. According to Wilson, the team avoids focusing on winning each meet like most sports, instead concentrating their focus on the Ivy League Championships. This year, the Big Green hope to finish fourth in both men’s and women’s, a rank above last year’s fifth place finishes.
“It literally will take a perfect race from every swimmer on the Dartmouth team to be able to do that,” Kerr said, “but I think if we put in the hard work and have the right mindset, and if we can channel all the hard work that we put into training trip over the next few months, I think it’s definitely possible for us to do that.”
After a morning practice on Thursday, the athletes packed up their bags and headed to the airport.
Days after they returned home, the athletes reassembled in Tampa Bay, Fla., where they competed in the January 4 Tampa Relay Carnival. Nearly one month after the Big Al Open where the men’s and women’s teams respectively finished second and third both teams took to the pool in central Florida and finished first. While admittedly the opposition was different, it was hard to argue with the result.
