Leading up to Hight School State

The weeks before a big meet are the hardest part of a season. Everyone gets sick and everyone is sore. Usually grades drop and there is nothing we can really do to study harder. It is honestly the worst part of the season and there is nothing that you can do to change that. But you can just keep going and eventually you stop feeling a lot of the pain.

Picture courtesy of imarcade.com 

Some of us actually really like this time of the year though. Sure the homework isn't fun but being sore and sick can sometimes be really fun if it also leads up to a really good meet after. This whole thing is put up by our coaches by giving us less yards but making the faster. Its so super hard in the higher groups as we sprint for the last 30 minutes of practice. I can not think of one time where anyone truly said they liked the sets but there are good and bad days. It all just depends on if you are able to sprint everyday for an entire two weeks. In this process your immune system completely shuts down with no point of return until after the meet. Your body changes from staying healthy to making sure you can still walk.
This would sound like a nightmare for most people. They would never want to even get in the water if they knew they wouldn't feel good later. But for us we don't know what we would do without it. This time in the season is but a short bit out of the greatness in the year and we would not miss it for the world.
Of the entire season this would usually be the most expected time for people to drop out but its exactly the opposite if you don't come to even one practice it means you can't take the heat, and no one wants to have other people think they can't do what everyone else is doing. The beginning of the entire year is actually the time when people drop out the most because they don't know what swimming can do for you yet.