Starting to feel it

So tomorrow I'm off to Kona. I'll be writing the column again for Triathlete. I enjoy that gig but it's a bit of pressure due in part to the numbers reading it. I've got my nine regular readers here on my blog and you guys hardly ever pressure me to be bring my A game with every entry - it's a different matter with the crowd checking out the Triathlete Mag site.

So my swim game on Friday turned out to be a pretty fine success.
I'll do my best to explain it here if anyone wants to try with their groups.
First you make a game board:


I made mine with 33 squares.
The first sq is your warm up and the last sq is the cool down.
After that you put the name of each of your swimmers on an individual sticky note and start everyone in sq 1. They all do the warm up.
After the warm up the swimmers each draw a poker chip from a bin. The chips are labeled 1 through 6. Whatever number the swimmer chooses is how many squares they advance.
Then they do the set written in the sq. I made each set approximately 300 metres.
The first person to get to the cool down and complete it wins.
I had prizes for the first 3.
Some tips - have all the swimmers draw their first chip prior to doing the warm up. This will help spread it out a bit. They come in fast and furious.
Also make sure you have different lengths for the the level of swimmers - eg - a set might be 3 x 100 or 2 x 100 - one for lane 1 and one for lane 4.
Make the sets on rest interval and not on a time - don't have 3 x 100 on 1:40 have it 3 x 100 on 10" rest.
If anyone gives this a try let me know how it goes.
With thanks to Norm Thibault and Peter Reid.

Now I have to pack.