Well it’s almost a year out from Beijing ‘08 and things are starting to get exciting. I recently spent a month overseas racing, which took me to places like Barcelona, Monaco, Rome and Los Angeles. I had some good wins and some close seconds, but the main experience I got out of the month was swimming fast in the mornings. As Beijing is going to be morning finals it is important that I am able to swim morning and night. Over the whole month my morning swims only had a variance of 0.30 seconds, which is quite consistent in sprint swimming.
Since arriving home, my coach (Grant Stoelwinder) and I have spent the last four weeks doing hard training. A training week consists of eight swim sessions totalling approximately 40km a week, three weights sessions, two cycles and one session of Pilates. As you could imagine it is pretty much a full time commitment, but I have also just returned to university studying two units which I have to attend over three days. All this takes its toll, I have to do a lot of work to keep my body from shutting down, each week I see the physiotherapist once, and have one to two massages. I have never found it easy to keep my body in good shape, hence three hip operations and six years of shoulder problems...
In just over a week I head off for the next meet in my lead up to the Olympics.... Japan!! An Australian team of 40 (20 swimmers and 20 staff) are doing a week long training camp in Kuala Lumpur before heading to Japan to swim at an invitational meet which will showcase some of the best swimmers in the world. I am really looking forward to racing and seeing how the past two months of racing and training have hopefully worked for the better. I will be contesting the 50, 100 freestyle and the 4x100 freestyle and medley relays. Let’s hope the next time I check in I have some good news....
Eamon Sullivan