Finally I think we can all see the light at the end of the tunnel.  The season is coming to a close, and for some, it finished this past weekend.

The majority of those who traveled to the Cavalier Invite at Virginia are officially done with the 2012-13 swim season!  There were a lot of fast swims at that meet, which puts the rest of the team in good spirits heading into Ivies.

One of the most surprising turns of events was senior Nick Johnson’s record-breaking performance in the 100-yard backstroke.  Congrats Nick, we will all get to see your name on the board for at least another year!

A select few swimmers who competed at UVA will continue to train over the next week and a half, at which point the final Ivy team spot will be decided.  On the women’s side, the league is weak in breastroke, so the spot will likely go to a breastroker, but anything could happen!

In the mean time, the rest of us are trying to enjoy our extra sleep, as morning practices have ceased and total yardage is dropping more and more by the day.  We are all very anxious to see the results of a long season of hard work.

Although Dori from Finding Nemo tells us to “just keep swimming,” Winter Storm Nemo is what kept the Men’s team from swimming at Harvard on Saturday.  Since nearly all of the roads in Massachusetts were closed, the meet was postponed for a week.

This change in meet scheduling is adding some complications for our coaching staff.  Those swimmers who are not on the Ivy team will travel to the University of Virginia for an invitational meet, the boys on the Ivy team will travel to Harvard for a duel meet, and the women’s Ivy team will remain at Pottruck to train.  Luckily we have three coaches, one for each location!

One spot remains open on the each Ivy team – the final member of each squad will be chosen based on the performances at the UVA invite.  Based on what I am seeing at practice, it is going to be a tough decision!

This weekend marked the last two dual meets for the women’s team. The men will travel to Cambridge on Friday to face Harvard for their final dual meet of the season.

Though dual meets might be over, we still have nearly a month left of training before Ivies.  The swimmers who are not a part of the Ivy team will journey to the University of Virginia in Charlottesville for an invitational meet Feb. 15-16.

For those who are not familiar with the training regimen for a swimmer, I shall explain.  Basically, we swim nine times a week, with seven to eight of these workouts being extraordinarily challenging.  Also most of the team lifts weights in addition to swimming three times a week, those who don’t lift, distance swimmers (such as myself) do a cardio circuit and run during that time.  Lastly, the women’s team also participates in a spin class once a week.

This brutal schedule begins Oct. 1 and continues throughout the season until about two weeks before a swimmer’s final meet.  At this point we cut out all activity outside of the pool, eliminate morning practice, and begin to cut back our yardage significantly.  This process allows the muscle a swimmer has built up all season to recover and prepare for high performance at championships.  It is known as taper and is swimmers favorite time of the season!

So, we are approaching taper and some of those not on the Ivy squad have already begun this glorious time of year.  Waiting for taper is like counting down the days until Christmas.  The end is near and we could not be more ready to see all our hard work pay off!

This weekend was one of the more eventful travel trips the men’s and women’s teams have experienced, at least in my time here at Penn.

We traveled to Providence, Rhode Island to take on Brown and Harvard at the brand new Katherine Moran Coleman Aquatics Center!  Though the pool is an amazing facility, I cannot say the same for our athletic performances at the venue.  With many of us sick with what our coach is calling “the plague,” we journeyed to Providence missing many key team members leading to our pretty terrible loss to both teams.

The men put up a better fight, but they too ultimately fell to Brown. (SEE RECAP)  Their meet against Harvard is not for another couple of weeks.

Though the loss put a damper on the weekend, we were all still really excited about swimming in the new pool at which men’s Ivies will be hosted during the first weekend in March.

The highlight of the weekend however, was definitely staying in the Biltmore Hotel, or so we thought. Traveling as a team can be expensive, so we do not typically stay in lavish hotels, but this weekend we thought we were living in the lap of luxury because each room had two king-size beds, and huge living room furniture sets and elegant looking décor.  We came to find out that the reason this hotel was so cheap, allowing us to stay there is because it is actually the most haunted hotel in America!  The Overlook Hotel from Stephen King’s The Shining was based off this exact hotel.

One of the freshman men said the lights in his room flickered and the coffee pot turned on in the middle of the night.  Thank God I didn’t know about this until we got home, or I wouldn’t have gotten a wink of sleep!