Our Last Training Day :(

And that's a wrap folks. We've done all of the Training there is to be done on this training camp. Swimmers I hope you are reading this and its Sunday morning, as if not I should've gone to bed!

I'll go through our day today with pictures and a few words as has been done for each day so far. I hope all of the fun and excitement that we've had today comes across in this post.

Again our alarms go off at 5:00AM, with us rolling out of bed into the BBF kit we have been wearing proudly this week. Grabbing the essentials and making our way down the 10 floors to the lobby to meet and get our cereal bars off of Susan and Terri-Louise, who've ensured their downstairs before everyone else yet again to enable us to get something to eat whilst we congregate before walking to the pool.

On our way to the pool the realization that it's our last day sinks in, there is some excitement about that we are going to have some fun later in the outdoor pool but also some unspoken sadness too that this fantastic week with our Blue Fins family is about to come to an end.

We arrive at the pool and the swimmers put their bags down outside the entrance as usual and get started with their jogging up and down the walkway in front of the building. We go through the heart raising, mobilization, activation and potentiation with a bit more focus today, it's the last hard session we have in Torremolinos and we are going to #SMASH-IT. We then realize that 6:00AM has come and gone, it's now 6:10 and we are still outside, and so are the lifeguards! The BBF Swim Camp staff are on the case with Sports Abroad rep Gloria (I know your like me and picturing the Hippo from Madagascar - I assure you that is an injustice, Gloria is nothing like the animated movie-star we are picturing!). Gloria explains that the pool doesn't open until 8AM, this kinda confused us due to our booking being 6-8, and Susan is looking at her phone as if it's in a different language BUT NO, the email does say that our training times are confirmed in the Indoor pool, Tuesday to Saturday 6-8:00AM! We continue with the pre-pool work and go into a bit more Activation and Potentiation, with me (Craig) thinking 'oh dear, I don't have 2 hours of land training, outside, with no equipment - planned or even unplanned locked away in my still half-asleep brain!! We are then offered the outdoor pool from 7-9, it's 6:20 and I start to think oh no! with that finish time i'll miss out on the Sausage Sandwich i've been promising myself all week!! (i've gotta be honest - sorry!!). But it's ok, the manager shows up in his Peugeot 206 with the key! I'd like to say the swimmers are all delighted BUT I think some of them were secretly thinking 'oh drat - we nearly got away without swimming' or no, never they wouldn't wish for that would they!?!?

Anyway onto the swimming, we were then given our 2 hour time slot so had 6:30-8:30 instead of 6-8:00. Great! The Sausage Sandwich is a go!! YES!!!

The session was a hard one (surprise of the year!) but this time a Pace Set. Something Blue-Fins can handle like no other, with a ton of Number 1 stroke 50s @ 200Pace and 100s Freestyle at 400Pace, the swimmers absolutely killed it! With our Boys Captain leading the way this morning with great pace times. We had a number of swimmers stretching, rolling, and generally keeping themselves together. Also a few not feeling 100% so just resting but being there with the team. We then had a little chat at the end after post pool work where the swimmers were informed that we would be getting breakfast, they could then collect their evaluated log books from myself and Darren before heading to bed for some rest. We would be doing lunch a little different today, the usual food was starting to get a little boring so we had decided that we'd go to the little supermarket that the ladies had gone and tracked down for us the day before.

To cut a long story short - we did exactly that and all had rolls from the bakery section with Ham & Cheese, the swimmers were also allowed to buy a few little bits to have with their lunch, not as much as they tried to get past us though!! Note: oh and family members, there should be a good number of presents coming your way that we're assured are not for them to have and that's why they just had to buy this stuff that they definitely aren't going to eat..... that's got to be the truth rite?!? Lunch was great, I think everyone appreciated the break from routine on this, our last day :-( !!

After lunch we had about 45min to get packed and back downstairs with our kit for the pool session, yes - the fun session! We arrived at the pool to be greeted by the pool staff/lifeguards who then told us that again - they were giving us 4 lanes, this was perfect as we have 4 teams that the swimmers have been split into to score points over the camp to be the top team. So we did a warm-up in Team lanes. We stayed in these lanes long after the warm-up and started doing some interesting drills in pairs. After the drills we then started some relays, with simple ones like 4x50FR, 4x50MR and then moved onto 2man medley where the swimmers had to go in pairs, 2 doing Fly/BK and the other 2 doing BR/FR, with bands keeping a leg each together and arms linked of-course! This was a fantastic source of laughter and entertainment for the staff and we took the opportunity to take some #FAIL pictures of the swimmers doing this! After some more fun relays we then had some group pictures of the swimmers and had to get one of Will in as he was feeling a little fragile during this session so didn't get in the water.

We then had some more group photos, before then having some more group photos!!

We then got onto the football pitch on the inside of the running track and the swimmers had a football tournament, the winning team being Team-1! Due to the enjoyment being had we decided to stay a little longer and the swimmers had a combined match, teams 1&4 vs 2&3. I can tell you that it was teams 2&3 that won this match with some very tense penalties being taken to decided the winners of this match (and some impressive saves from some - I'm sure Charlotte will show you the video of her saving the ball at some point!!).

We then made our way back to the hotel to get showered and changed for the Team Meal. For this, once again we owe it to our Team Managers, Susan and Terri-Louise for finding us a restaraunt that want's to take 17 extremely hungry swimmers in, and 4 nutcase adults that agreed to be responsible for them for a whole week! The meal was at a restaurant called Little Italy (I don't feel I need to explain the type of cuisine they serve...), it was a fantastic little place with some delicious Pizzas that we all thoroughly enjoyed - even if some of us were kept waiting longer than others!!!! It was a very enjoyable evening with a group of wonderful Kids and Staff, as was the whole week. And a perfect last day to finish off on a high.