Team Tunnicliffe in Palma, Spain for Trofeo Princess Sophia

by Anna Tunnicliffe on 23 Mar 2010 Team Tunnicliffe has just arrived in Palma, Spain for training leading into the Trofeo Princess Sophia, the third event on the ISAF Sailing World Cup tour. Our last week has been extremely busy, between the USSTAG Training Camp in Colorado Springs, and our travels over here. We are all a little tired, but are looking forward to a good night's sleep before starting training tomorrow morning.

The training camp was a four day event in which team members of both the USSTAG and the Development team got together at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs for fitness tests, and a chance to meet with a nutritionist, a sport pshycologist, and trainers.

Throughout the camp, our days basically went like this: wake up, eat, lecture, fitness test, lecture, eat, lecture, fitness test, lecture, eat, lecture, bed. The camp was hard work but also a lot of fun, and we derived great value from it. Mostly, we got to compare our test results to where we were at this time last year, but also learned some insight into sports' nutrition and pschycology.

Our tests included anything from a running test, as many pushups as we could do in a minute, as many pullups as we could do, to squating as much weight as we could three times. We also did boat specific training, which included pulling in a weighted line as fast as we could, and doing a tacking drill.

The day we left, we did some training in the pool. It was a great activity, and really mixed up the routine of the camp. It felt good to get in some exercise, rather than just doing tests, but it was tiring. The training involved swimming a lap, jumping out of the pool, doing some pushups, situps or something similar, and then jumping back in, swimming a lap, and jumping back out... We did this for about 40 minutes. After that, we had a bit of fun. The group was divided into four smaller groups and given 20 minutes to come up with a syncronized swimming routine. Very entertaining, but embarrasing as that the syncro team was in the pool on the other side doing their training, and they kept looking over and giving us quizzical looks.

We flew home to Florida for the night and then hopped back on the plane the next day to fly here, Spain. We start training tomorrow morning, Tuesday, with the official regatta practice starting on Saturday and racing starting on Sunday.

We are all looking forward to racing again, as it's been a while. We will do an update closer to the regatta to keep you informed of how things are
going.

We would like to thank our sponsor Carmeusefor their continued support of our campaign for the 2012 Olympics in London. We would also like to thank USSTAG for their continued support.


www.teamtunnicliffe.com