Count down to Nationals: 10 Days

We leave for Nationals in 10 days! 

I've decided to celebrate the 10 day countdown by posting something to help me get pumped up for ECCs each day. It'll vary between topics like taper strategies, getting psyched, goal setting, tech suits, etc. I also plan on having my teammate and absolute favorite freshman Josh help me with the countdown. He may be one of the only humans I've met who loves swimming as much as I do. 

Day 10: Pump up Playlist

I am a huge mental swimmer. Forgetting headphones at a meet is a death wish for me. Music helps me focus and psych up for sprint races. 

I typically make a new playlist for all my big meets i.e. the MUSC home invitational and ECC Nationals. I prefer loud music with a fast pace. I go through phases with artists, and right now I'm on a Kanye West/Jay Z/Childish Gambino kick. 

Ultimately my meet playlists are a huge jumble of music. I've got anything between 90s rap, Latin pop and top 40 jams. At the end of the day, I'll listen to whatever gets me psyched the most. 

So here's a rough draft of my ECC Nationals Playlist for 2015. The songs are in no particular order because I'll listen to them on Spotify which makes me shuffle them anyways. I'm also a huge swimming geek and name each of my meet playlists after a goal time I want for the meet/season. It's an extra reminder to keep me focused on my goals. 

******warning there are probably bad words/strong language in almost all of these songs. Listen at your own risk. If you can't handle a few four letter words, you probably shouldn't click on any of the songs**********

ECCs Playlist 2015: 24.8

I'm sure I'll add more in the next few days. You can follow along with my musical journey on Spotify as I add more and more pump up jams.

Have a suggestion for my pump-up playlist? Tweet me @katiegrunik and I'll add it to my playlist! 

Nationals Preparations

We're officially less than two weeks away from ECC Nationals! I am BEYOND excited to compete this year.

Here's my checklist of things I've done so far to help me prep my mind/body for competition:

• I ordered my tech suit. Mine is black/sapphire. My teammate Josh, or as we call him Shoes, works at a swim store and is bringing it back for me from spring break. It's bad ass and beautiful and I cannot wait to compete in it. 
• I made a master spreadsheet of my times so far this season. I broke most of my races down by 25 times. I've been able to analyze my splits and fine-tune my sprinting. 10/10 would recommend. 
• I had a fantastic last meet of the season at the University of Illinois. While I didn't PR, I held some times that I haven't been able to be consistent with all season. It went exactly how I wanted my last meet before ECCs to go. 
• I changed my laptop background to a celebratory photo of the women's medley from the 2012 London Olympics. Nothing is more motivating than the look of pure joy on a swimmer's face after a race. 

Things I didn't plan to do before ECCs, but they happened anyways: I sprained my right ankle. 

I am so unsuited for land that walking is what took out my ankle. Instead of focused training over spring break, I spent my time icing my ankle and pulling. I'm still recovering, but I did finally swim a full practice yesterday. 

Unfortunately, I am too competitive to stop swimming, especially this close to nationals. Swollen ankle or not, I will be on that block in my tech suit, ready to take on my races. I'm out for an individual medal this time around, and I will not be stopped on my quest to the podium. 

Here's a throwback to our 4x200 free relay (I'm the one actually swimming in this)

And here's our 4x50 free relay standing on the podium with our second place medals.

MUSC Update

My team has been traveling a lot this semester. Our latest meet was to the University of Indiana where it snowed. A lot. Seriously it snowed the whole time we were there.

Sidenote: IU looks like Hogwarts. It's beautiful.

Mizzou Swim Club ended up placing third in overall, men's and woman's. After a long hiatus, we finally have some new records! My teammate Carston broke the 25 breastroke record with a 13.11. 

I reset my 25 free record from last year to a 12.04!

Two weeks before, we had traveled to Northwestern and swam decently. I swam the fastest 50 free split of my career, a 24.9! The team finished fourth overall in one of our more competitive meets of the season. 

I hope those personal best times stick around by the time we go to nationals. It's a nice mental reset for me to see the fruit of my labor. Often in swimming, you train so hard and barely see results. I'm lucky in that I've never been a conventional athlete. 

I'm currently working on a spreadsheet of all my times from the last few years. I hope to use this data sheet to get me in the right mindset for practice leading up to nationals. I've been struggling to stay on track with my training schedule. 

 43 days until we're on the road to nationals!