How sweet it is!

How sweet it is!



Silver at last

Silver at last


First view of the competition pool!

First view of the competition pool!

Beijing 2008

Beijing 2008
Everything is beautufully decorated like this

Cheering

Cheering
Aussies on pooldeck as peter Leek swims to gold in the mens 100m butterfly s8.

Watercube!

Watercube!
our first view of the cube, arriving for training

dressing up malaysia style

dressing up malaysia style

KL tower malaysia

KL tower malaysia

Dinning hall in the village

Dinning hall in the village
an amazing fruit sculpture

Marayke and her mum in the watercube

Marayke and her mum in the watercube
how exciting to finally catch up with mum, who had been in china by herself for 3 days!

Dress ups: Malaysian swim princesses!

Dress ups: Malaysian swim princesses!
When in Malaysia..... Kat Lewis and I up the Kuala Lumpur Tower

Opening Ceremony

Opening Ceremony
The four seasons. We were sitting so close i could have reached out to touch these snow dappled trees

Opening ceremony

Opening ceremony

opening ceremony

opening ceremony
All audience members were given a bag with props like this light up spinning stick to use during the ceremony

Monday, August 11, 2008

Second Last week of training

Hi all

After todays training session I can report that I am on track to swim fast in beijing.
Today we did a time trial for 150m Individual medley, wearing my new swim suit the FSPRO.
My time, 3.24 was 2 seconds faster than my best time of 3.26.86 so I am very excited!
Even though this was a broken Medley (with 5 seconds rest at the end of each lap) it is a good indicator of the time I could race in Beijing as in a race you have atmosphere and adrenalin to get you going faster. Before the Athens Paralympics my final time trial was exactly the time I ended up swimming to win bronze.
We finished off today with 20 25's freestyle off 1 minute, and I kept them all under 31.5 seconds which was great.Then a swin down.
Unfortunately I somehow ripped a huge hole in the leg of my suit so this will be my last practice in the suit till I arrive in Beijing and am issued with the team uniform swim suit.
Today I invited my mum Marion along to video my session, so I will have a record of my progress towards Beijing. It also added some incentive to swim fast, as I didnt want a slow session imortalised on film! Hopefully I can put together a nice little doco with footage from my race, the village and the training beforehand. We also took lots of photos which you can see down the side of this blog.
Out of the water I am starting to get organised. I have a giant list of things to do and buy before Beijing- everything from shampoo to an aussi flag to wave from the medal dais.
I have even practiced painting my finger nails green and gold, with a tiny Australian flag on the thumb ( a very intricate process to paint I can tell you!).
It has been super exciting watching the Olympics on TV and seing Steph Rice and Libby Trickett win gold, and local sunshine Coast swimmer melanie Schlanger win bronze with the relay team. I can't wait to get over to Beijing!

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