Jan. 4, 2008

COLUMBIA, Mo. - The Missouri men's swimming and diving team headed to Phoenix, Ariz., this week for its annual training trip. The team not only plans to spend a good deal of quality time in the weight room and pool, but also looks to get out and enjoy all that Arizona's capital city has to offer. Providing a glimpse of the Tigers' time spent in the Grand Canyon State is senior Brandon Lee in a daily journal.

Of his Friday, Lee writes, "We started out the day with practice at 7:30, so by then the sun was on its way up. The sunrise around here is just as beautiful as the sunset. We started out with a short warm-up and then went right into a long volume set with a lot of aerobics and aerobic plus efforts, which is what the distance people did. It was around 7000 and very hard for me. By the middle of the set your muscles feel like they are going to burst. They are filled with lactic acid and hurts more than anything in the world. The other groups did a huge kick set and they told me their legs were cramping and burning during the whole set. The morning practice was pretty boring, but during the day the sun was out and it was warm outside so most of the team laid out by the pool after a quick nap."

"Tonight's practice was pretty intense. We left for the pool around 3:15, did a team stretch and then started the wonderful dryland part of practice. There were 7 stations. First up was a running station, one where we did army crawls across the grass, another with some squat jumps and a third with frog jumps. We followed that with mountain climbers. Let me tell you, it was pretty intense. At the next station we did lat throw-downs with med balls then squat throw-ups. Up next were 10 clapping push-ups. We then moved onto the next station, where we did box jumps, incline push-ups and dips. The next station called for lunges under hurdles and fast feet. That one wasn't too bad. After that we did lunges and squats, more jumps, fly crunches and inch worm push-ups. Then we moved on to handstand push-ups and monkey bars. I think that about sums up the dryland."

"The water workout was the famous, traditional twenty 100s. It is a huge test set for us. They are all fast on the 140 long course. As a team everyone did pretty good. By about number 6 everyone is hurting pretty badly, so from there on you really have to dig deep and find your second wind."

"After practice we headed over to a place called Cracker Jacks, where we ate dinner and then had the place to ourselves for 2 hours to ride go-karts, play mini golf, hit balls in the batting cages and ride around in the bumper boats. The whole team had a great time, but everyone was pretty tired and worn out from practice. We still managed to have a great time though. Even the coaches had a great time riding around on the go-karts. Everyone was bumping and spinning out. It was fun."

"That about wraps up the day. Now everyone is heading to bed and getting ready for weights, practice and a meet tomorrow night."