Articles by Dartes Swimmers Past and Present

2010 Training Camp at the BEST Centre, Mallorca

Departure and Arrival - Day 1

Handily, Robin Hood Airport has flights directly to Palma de Mallorca International. From there, Bluewater Training Camps (owners of the BEST Centre) had arranged a coach to Colonia Sant Jordi and the Hotel Sur Mallorca. We arrived at Robin Hood just after Thursday lunch time and handed out the souvenir shirts made possible by a couple of our local Lions clubs and Yorkshire Building Society.

Once properly attired, the kids bade farewell to their parents and set off for the check-in gate.

For 2010 the coaches had selected a few new faces to attend their first camp. For most of them this would be their first time away from home without parents in tow. A challenging time then, and there were a few tears on show, but the parents soon got their emotions under control and we were off.

The kids didn't seem unduly concerned.

Through passport control and the obligatory strip search for Coach Wallace. Okay, not this year; usually they drag him to one side. In the departure lounge the coaches left the kids in the capable hands of the chaperones and went in search of the traditional slap-up departure meal.

Eventually the flight was called, we boarded the plane and so began our week in Mallorca training at the Bluewater Elite Swim Training Centre, more commonly known as the BEST Centre.

Author: Dave Cuthbert
Date: 30 Dec 2010

Why we run Training Camps

Under your duvet it's lovely and warm, but you sense that out there in the darkness of your bedroom the air has an icy, arctic chill. There's another 4 hours before the sun rises (if it even does today) and you'd like nothing better than to go back to sleep and wait for it. But you need to be up! From your cosy spot beneath the duvet you can hear the muffled bleeping of the alarm forcing you awake. Bravely you poke an arm out from under the covers and blindly fumble around until your finger tips find the right button.

SLAM!

The alarm stops bleeping and you jump determindly out of bed like the dedicated athlete you are. You catch a glimpse of the time: 4.30am! Half an hour to get to the pool and dive in to the icy cold water - oh joy. That's the usual start to the day for many top swimmers the world over. It's not easy, and that part of a swimmer's lifestyle certainly isn't fun, but it's part and parcel of what it takes to reach the top in this sport.

For one week in the season however, all that changes. For one short week, there's no need to hide from the cold under a duvet. You'll probably be woken by blazing sunshine streaming through the curtains rather than the bleeping of an alarm; or by waves crashing against the sea wall outside your hotel room. If neither of those wake you, rest assured, one of your team mates will probably be along in a few minutes to jump up and down on your bed.

For one teeny, tiny week towards the end of October you may well be treated to 7 days of non-stop training under a baking hot Mediterranean sun.

One thing we stress every year is that training camps aren't holidays; few people believe it until they've been on one! After 4 hours in the pool each day, plus an hour or more land training, and a more detailed than usual log book to update after every session, there's not an awful lot of free time left for our athletes to kick back and relax. For those of you with larger than average families you'll also appreciate that the coaches and chaperones have their work cut out too. 20 swimmers aged from 12 up to 16, and just 4 adults to keep them in line.

So why do we do it, and why is it important?

The reasons are many, but the biggest is to kick start their early season training volume. Everyone is expected to complete between 60-70,000m in the pool during the week. For a few of our older swimmers that's a normal week, but for the vast majority it's a healthy increase which will make a big difference to their season. As if that wasn't enough on it's own: such a training camp is an experience few people ever get the chance to enjoy with memories that will last a lifetime; it's definitely a week of team bonding; for many it'll be their first holiday without parents; and for everyone it could even be considered a much deserved reward for all those cold, early mornings.

Watch and Learn

When you set up a training camp it's important to set the environment. Like the vast majority of teams visiting the BEST Centre, we went doubles all week with one morning off. 12 sessions of around 5,500m - 6,000m each. That means the kids were going to get tired - the younger ones very tired! But it's important that everyone rallies around their team mates and encourages them to keep going and keep working hard. An occasional negative comment like: "I'm tired, can't we miss a session?" must be avoided at all costs.

On the whole we did a great job.

We were, as usual, the noisiest in the pool with plenty of peer support through the tough sets; plenty of cheering through the fun sets; and an occasional spirit cheer on deck to mark the end of a session. Kick sets were punctuated by Flippy's trademark seal barks and a variety of other indescribable noises from the older boys. The younger guys satisfied themselves with hi-fives as they kicked down the 50m pool. On one particularly cold evening, our older boys spontaneously jumped from the pool and immediately wrapped their arms around each other in a group hug. Coach Drew told a somewhat surprised James Parrack who just happened to be walking by: "Oh that's nothing to do with the cold, they just love a good hug now and then".

Oh wait, you thought it was a warm weather camp?

Probably the biggest surprise for most people when diving in to an outdoor 50m pool in blazing sunshine is the icy cold water. If you think Ponds Forge is freezing cold, you're in for a shock. Warm weather camp this might have been, but it was still October, and once the glorious sun says goodnight and the floodlights click on, the temperature drops quickly. Our time slots were rather extreme: midday and early evening. We couldn't slap on enough suncream for the 11am session; yet we were taking extra warm clothes to slip in to when finishing at 8pm.

The BEST Centre is really unlike any other destination for a training camp. Last year in Sardinia for example, we were the only team on site. Most places have probably another 2 teams in the area using the same pool. At BEST though, the pool schedule was split in to six 2 hour segments: 3 in the morning 7am-1pm and 3 in the afternoon 2pm-8pm. In each block there are often 2 or 3 teams utilising the 10 available lanes and most of them were staying in the same hotel as us: The Hotel Sur Mallorca.

If you're thinking 3 or 4 swim teams staying in the same hotel sounds like a bit of a nightmare you'd be right. For the final few days though, there were actually 7 and we were probably the smallest with 21 swimmers.

To give you an idea of how many teams use BEST, we had a brain storming session by the pool on the last day. Here's our best effort at remembering the teams we bumped into around our hotel. Worth nothing that there was at least one other hotel being used too. In no particular order:

• East Lothian
• City of Liverpool
• Maxwell (Premier swim team from Oxfordshire & North Bucks)
• Sevenoaks
• Hearts Swim Team
• Thurrock (Essex County Champions)
• Lincoln Vulcans (Lincolnshire's High Performance Club)
• Swim Swansea (Location of Welsh ITC)
• Wycombe
• West Suffolk
• A team from Sweden
• Another from Denmark
• and a contingent from British Swimming's AASE programme

As we've mentioned numerous times over the past few months, watching what other coaches do with their teams is very instructive. We had a great selection of top teams to watch in action, both in the pool and their land work in the sun on deck.

On our first evening session (Friday night), Coach Wallace put his 10 swimmers through a speed set and had them writing times on recording boards. It's standard practice at Dartes; everyone from Phase 4 upwards has one in their kit bag. Half way through the set, the Danish coach walked over from the gym where he'd been watching curiously. After a brief chat and a good look at what was being written down, he walked away impressed: "I take that back [to Denmark], good good". A useful technique passed on!

We nearly presented him with a recording board of his own to take back to Denmark. Unfortunately they'd finished their gym work before the idea came to us.

For most of our sessions we shared the pool with British Swimming's Advanced Apprenticeship in Sporting Excellence programme. We also shared our corridor in the hotel with a few of their athletes. AASE, commonly pronounced Ace, were split in three groups and spread between two camps in Paphos and this one in Mallorca. We were joined by the Backstroke and Butterfly specialists and got to admire their attention to detail in every session. It's useful to see how such high calibre swimmers perform before and during training, the skills they employ, the training sets that are thrown at them, and the way they behave around the hotel.

Just like our guys, they too had a log book to fill in during the camp. A much more comprehensive affair than the one we insisted on. Being substantially older than most of our group, their land work consisted of much heavier work in the gym and a lot of running. One afternoon they were spied running around the coastal road of Sant Jordi with team mates on hired bikes riding alongside. One unfortunate AASE girl picked a spot right in front of the hotel to lose control and crash in to a car park bollard. Looking around she thought she'd got away with it - not quite ;-)

Most of the other top teams performed similar land training routines to ourselves. Lots of core work on the warm tiled floor and medicine ball training for the older athletes. The pool side gym is well equiped with free weights and a few machines too and everything you need for a successful camp is available on site. With so many teams using the facility, the pool side got a bit crowded at times, but there was always somewhere to squeeze in for blood flow work prior to diving in to the pool.

Training camps done the Dartes way, just like most other performance programmes, are tough. Few swimmers ever get to experience them, even here at Dartes, we only ever take a small proportion of our athletes. The weekly volume tends to be higher than normal (over 70km) and the land training much more intense. Through all of that, everyone on the team must remain 100% positive no matter what is thrown at them and no matter how tired they may feel. It may sound cheesy, but a Positive Mental Attitude really does produce much better results.

We carefully select the swimmers we think will cope and be an asset to the positive team culture. We don't take anyone who isn't hitting their LTAD requirements and we leave behind those who slack off and miss training sessions. Competition performances are rarely considered, training background and a big work ethic is what we're looking for. The October camp is designed to kick start early season training so we look for swimmers who will benefit most from that and those who will help everyone else achieve the same.

Next year we'll be looking at ways to select the lucky 20 much closer to departure date. If we can leave final selection until a couple of weeks before that would suit us perfectly. So if you fancy a spot on camp in 2011, take a long, honest look at your training attendance. If you can honestly say, hand on heart, that you're hitting your LTAD requirements and doing so with a smile on your face, you may well be in line. If you can't, it's a safe bet you won't be!

Getting kids away from their parents allows the coaching team a good look at their lifestyle habits. As a prime example, far too many kids eat far too many sweets. As coaches we were very concerned at the amount of junk food being consumed; especially as this is a bunch of kids who've had the benefit of expert sports nutrition workshops! If you regularly (or even occasionally) buy sweets for your young athletes, please think twice in future - they're consuming far too many!

Not only do sweets provide the wrong type of sugar (quick release, sending them loopy for a brief moment but with no sustained energy), but they have next to no nutritional value. They suppress appetite but provide none of the essential nutrients that athletes desperately need for top level performance. Remove the temptation and feed them fruit and vegetables instead. If there's one thing you can do to help your swimmers achieve better results, that is it!

First Time Experience: Kim and Chloe

2010 was first time on camp for Chloe Hardy (Adw). On the last evening, after a killer Freestyle set had left her groaning in agony on the side of the pool, she penned this paragraph to get her own back:

Counting down the days till Mallorca ends is like waiting for Christmas to come round again. Being at Mallorca has taught me that you need to work hard and then you will get rewards. The training was fairly hard, but on the whole we got through each session as it came.

P.S. I hate you Dave for all the 24x100m and 30x100m that we did!

She enjoyed it really, even when Coach Dave made her run up 5 flights of stairs back at the hotel, just after that killer Freestyle set (see photo)! Hey, she still beat the lift.

We also asked another first timer Kim Smith (Adw) to give her thoughts on the week:

Being at the Mallorca training camp has taught me a lot of useful skills. However the main one was looking after myself without the help of parents around. It was quite scary being away from home for the first time, but once we all began to bond and the training began, we were OK. We were all going through the same experience.

The land training and swimming was very hard, hence the name: 'Intense Training Camp'. Everybody worked to the max throughout the week of 60,000m which was very tiring as it was such an unusual experience. Besides the hard work, we were allowed some free time to go to the pool with our friends or just rest before the next session. Once we were half way through the camp we were able to have a morning off (YAY!). We visited a local beach where we all played games, went in the sea or just talked to our friends.

Finally I would like to say a big thank you to Andy and Dave as I was one of the fortunate swimmers chosen to take part in such a great experience :)

THANKYOU! (:

Swimmer Highway

From Hotel Sur to the pool is about a 10 minute walk. In fact everything in the town is about a 10 minute walk from the pool. Turn left out of the hotel lobby, left again down the side of the hotel, then down a long straight road until you reach BEST. There's usually a steady stream of swimmers taking the journey.

Checking out the early morning sea breeze from the balcony before breakfast - there's a team walking through the car park on their way to the pool. Sitting down for a relaxed breakfast at 8.30 - a swim team walks through the car park towards the hotel entrance. Relax on the balcony after breakfast - a swim team is wandering off towards the pool below you. You get the idea, it's constant! Like military patrols in a war zone, just with much brighter colours.

Some start an hour before their start time to do land work, others just 20mins. Some use the return journey as their daily run, others run first. Many don't walk back until after a post pool gym session. Lots of variety, but it means the road is rarely devoid of British swimmers. During a busy half-term week like ours, it's unlikely you'll pass along that road without bumping in to a swim team or two!

After an evening spent swimming through a thunderstorm in gale force winds, Monday night witnessed an unofficial race back to the hotel between swimmers from at least 3 teams just to get warm.

You can walk for hours around Colonia St Jordi and barely see a local resident or a moving car. Conversly, you can't walk the length of that road without meeting another British swim team. It is a very sleepy town and the BEST Centre must have permanently altered its economy when it opened its doors in July 2009.

It must also give the local residents a very biased view of British kids. Athletic, broad shouldered, tall and slim, with a not uncommon 6 pack being shown off in the sun. A little loud perhaps, but always polite, and quiet as mice after 10pm. Sure beats the impression of British holidaymakers that most Mediterranean islanders have.

Day by Day

Thursday

Some things never change. By the time we arrived at the hotel it was the usual rush for dinner, sort out the rooms, and get off to bed before the first morning of training. We always seem to arrive at hotels after the kitchen has closed so it was cold meet and salads for our hungry mob. Plenty of selection though, the hotel is well experienced in catering for swim teams and although only cold food was available at this hour, they did us proud.

After dinner the swimmers were sorted in to rooms and straight to bed, it was already mid-night so unpacking could wait until tomorrow. Time for Coach Wallace and Coach Dave to go on their traditional mid-night swimming pool hunt so we knew where to go in the morning. Unlike in Sardinia last year where the pool was right under our noses on the hotel complex, yet couldn't be found despite walking round it 3 or 4 times, the BEST Centre couldn't really be missed, even in the dark. A long straight road left us with the familiar sound of water lapping in to pool filter drains. A low bamboo fence (shown in photo, left) was all that separated us from a wide open, 10 lane, 50m pool.

Friday

Well important things first. We brought one of the table cloth banners with us in case a photo opportunity with James Parrack arose - yes, we planned that in advance. But seeing as we had it with us, why not hang it off the balcony. We should have brought more of them really, one on its own looked a little lonely. Still, better than anyone else managed - next time we'll brand the entire hotel!

We started off our training regime with an hour's land training by the pool. The sun was scorching hot! In the pool were a couple of Scottish teams trying to avoid sun-stroke under the mid-day glare. Our turn was quickly approaching, so the chaperones made sure everyone was covered in liberal amounts of suncream. If sunburn was the chief concern for Chaperone Helen, there was something else concerning the coaches. Backstroke with the sun directly over head! Mirrored goggles are absolutely essential when training out doors. Without them Backstroke isn't fun. If you're coming next year, invest in some mirrored goggles.

Friday was also our first opportunity to use the new wedge block in a few HVO sprints. BEST had two lanes fitted with them, so we tried them out. If nothing else, it proved that you need to practice with them to get the hang of it.

6,000m and 2 hours later we climbed out and started thinking about lunch. Unfortunately, being Spain, we happened to finish just as siesta time was starting. The shops were all closed until 4pm, so we had to make do with a hotel sandwich before an afternoon by the fun pool.

Saturday & Sunday

Over the weekend a few more teams arrived and the hotel began to fill up for half term. For the rest of the week reception would be filled with mesh kit bags as teams rushed back from the pool, dumped their gear, and headed straight in to the dinning hall. Fortunately there didn't seem to be many guests not associated with a team, but we did hear of a few complaints due to the noise (not directed at us, fortunately).

In the pool the usual 12,000m was splashed out (skillfully) on both days, with lashings of suncream in the morning and giant gnat bites in the evening.

We discovered the yacht club on Sunday after a walk around the costal path. Lunch was spent in the sun at a lovely beach front restaurant. Being the last week of the holiday season this single street was the only part of Colonia St Jordi with any sign of life.

The night time entertainment was had by the table tennis where Oliver Richardson (Edl) dominated and Coach Wallace (always first to be nibbled) showed off his gnat bite. Inside the pub quiz and disco weren't exactly buzzing, but our outdoor ping pong tournament earned quite an audience with the first two floors of swimmers hanging off balconies to watch and cheer.

Monday

Every year we run to the same schedule: 2 hours training every morning, 2 hours every evening, with a morning off half way through. Half way through this time landed on Monday, and so Monday morning was designated Chaperone Fun Day Out. After breakfast we packed our buckets and spades (more commonly known as footballs and throwy things) and went off in search of a beach. The ever organised Peter and Helen had already found us one, so we knew where to go. What they didn't tell us was the only way on to the beach was by hanging on to someone's garden wall and tip toeing along a slippery concrete ledge with the sea crashing up all around you. Easy enough on the way there, but then the tide came in!

As it turned out, we couldn't have picked a better day for the fun day out. The bright sunshine from the rest of the week suddenly turned to grey clouds, the temperature dropped and so did the rain. Being a week beyond the end of the normal holiday season, the beach hut was closed too. The upside: we had the beach to ourselves, almost ...

"Oh look at that man, he's so far away you can't see his trunks and he looks naked" giggled one of the girls. The man, who for no good reason we christened The German, promptly turned round and walked towards the sea, soon to be followed by another one.
"OH MY GOD, he IS naked!"
At which point Chaperone Helen turned to get a better look and quickly volunteered to go and take souvenir photos - well okay she didn't, but this was the one and only time she didn't run off to get the camera. To put everyone's mind at rest, it was a very long beach, and there was an awful lot of sand between them and us.

If we thought the few drops of rain, light breeze, and drop in temperature was as bad as things were going to get, boy were we in for a shock. There's one thing training camps achieve better than anything else. You can do hard training back home and rack up the volume. Occasionally we spend a few weekends together in hotels for distant meets. But for all those people who stayed in Doncaster jealous of how good their team mates had it in Mallorca, you weren't there for Monday night's training.

Monday night should have been renamed Team Building night.

In Health and Safety obsessed Britain, where we're told we even need to sit a lifeguard in the chair despite already having one on deck, what happened on Monday night would never have been allowed. An old friend who once lifeguarded at a Lido in the UK, once told me it was standard procedure to evacuate the pool whenever it rained - for safety reasons. Thankfully then, we went to Spanish Mallorca where such ridiculous rules don't apply.

As soon as we walked on deck we realised this evening would be a challenge. To say it was a bit breezy was an understatement. As any coach poolside could testify, without quick reactions anyone wearing a cap would have it blown off. Talking to Ian Blyth, Youth Coach to Maxwell Swim Club who were in before us, he'd almost lost his in addition to having a kick board fly half way down the pool. The flying kick board was not an exception, anything left by the side of the pool would blow away. We quickly moved pull buoys behind starting blocks, but not even that was enough to prevent them flying down the pool occasionally.

Timing the swimmers highlighted a new problem for us that would be familiar to cyclists everywhere. Tail winds and head winds were affecting swim speed significantly. The wind chill factor also reduced the temperature pool side, leaving wet, semi-naked swimmers shivering on starting blocks, and in the heated pool alike.

The dip in temperature was probably the worst part, and in the UK would probably have been enough to close the centre for the night. However, it quickly became apparent that the flashes seen around the poolside weren't just due to Chaperone Helen taking photos. There was actually some pretty serious lightening heading our way too!

But when faced with adversity, the human spirit bonds fellow sufferers together. Battling through the cold and blackness (the sun completely disappeared each day by 7pm), encouraging each other through each set, the Dartes guys were by far the most vocal in support of each other despite being the smallest group. From Flippy's barking seal impressions and the group hugs of Rich, Nic, Elliot, et al. All the way through to Tuesday night's high-fives and shouts of encouragement through the final kick set. A fantastic job of team support by all.

Tuesday

As you'd expect after the freezing cold night, the sun didn't really get its act together until we were leaving the pool at 1pm on Tuesday. It did its best to burn us over lunch at SPAR, then dipped back behind the clouds just as we went to sit by the fun pool. It was a pretty uneventful day. The evening though, well that turned in to chaperone folk lore night.

As I'm sure you can all imagine, there are many stories shared between chaperones and coaches from different teams. You can't do these training camps for long without having a few of your own stories to share. At its most crude, the role of the chaperone can probably be summed up as: "Make sure you come back with the same quantity as you left with - no less - no more - and definitely no surprises 9 months later!" To that end most teams (ourselves included) have a strict rule: boys and girls must not be in each others rooms. Ever. That said, being an age-group programme we have an easier job of it than most. Can you imagine being responsible for a group containing 16-19 year olds!

So over a pint while guarding our corridor, the stories began to flow; the coach and chaperone version of ghost stories by the camp fire. Tales and myths passed down by generation after generation of coach and chaperone from swim teams all over the country and no doubt the rest of the world too.

"Do you have any girls in there?" One chaperone would ask a room full of boys just after the 10pm curfew. Better to let them confess first, the room inspection was going to happen anyway.

"Oh no, it's just us" would come back the predictable response.

"Let me see your faces" The obligatory face check with names being ticked off the room list, just to be sure no one was missing; a local night club too much temptation perhaps.

"Good, now I'm coming in to check the balcony, the wardrobe, and under the beds!"
It seems harsh but it has to be done. 99% of transgressions are innocent enough and quite amusing long after the event, but that other 1% isn't worth the risk. No need for any of that this year of course, our kids were all as good as gold - yeah, right!

There was a story told of one camp many years ago where a senior coach made an impromptu room check. He knocked at the door and announced himself to the boys in the room and heard frantic scuffling from inside. On entering, nothing seemed amiss. Convinced all was not as it seemed, he followed the same list of hiding places: check on the balcony, under the beds, don't forget behind the curtains. Finally he opened the wardrobe door. Coats, hoodies, jackets, all neatly hung up. Shelves neatly packed with t-shirts, sweaters, etc. Various running shoes and girls legs lined up along the bottom and a bag or two hastily stuffed in for good measure.

Silently, he left the wardrobe door open and walked from the room. A cringing face poked out guiltily from between the jackets: "He found me didn't he?"

The name of the club is long forgotten, if it happened at all, but that is one of the tamer examples of chaperone legends. Folk lore night was brought to an abrupt halt when Helen announced: "I'm just getting some hydrocortisone cream to rub on my nips". Mosquito bites she may have meant, but we weren't taking any chances.

Wednesday

For a change we spent lunch time away from the SPAR bakery and walked round to the other beach - the more upmarket beach by the Yacht Club. Delicious food once again under a scorching sun was followed by fun and games on the world's finest sand. AASE arrived just after we'd sat down to eat and took over the top end of the beach, we would later take over the restaurant end. We'd heard a rumour that the beach was man-made with specially imported sand - easy to believe. The finest, softest sand imaginable just sank away beneath your feet as you paddled deeper in to the gently sloping sea. Walking half way out towards the moored boats would only leave you at waist depth. Swimming around the boats and yachts you got the impression you could just stand up and walk - but don't do that, it was a little deeper!

If any of our visitors from other clubs are reading this and planning their own trip to BEST, both of our beaches are easy to find using the photo from the hotel balcony as a guide. For the yacht club (highly recommended) keep to the coastal path shown in the photo and walk all the way around the headland (more direct routes do exist). For the long, isolated beach, beloved of The German, follow the same path behind the hotel in the opposite direction.

After volleyball and souvenir hunting it was back to the hotel to prepare for training. Wednesday night was the last big session, so it was only right to give them an evening to remember. We treated them to a tough VO₂max set of 24x100m on #1; building through the first 4 to about 85-90% effort, then holding steady to the end. Done right this is painful. Motivated senior athletes can easily end up in tears or throwing up or both by the end.

This is the set that prompted Chloe to write her hate letter. She was clearly in pain with 6 to go, but Hardy she is, and she kept pushing the pace to the very end. Regularly hitting 1:18 for most reps, she suddenly dropped to 1:17 with just three remaining. Then a 1:16 was followed up with a 1:15. To finish she pulled out a 1:14 overtaking Oliver who started 10sec in front on Butterfly. Pretty good swimming from a push!

She wasn't the only one in pain that night though (to be fair, most probably were). Elliot Trofimowicz (Spa) managed to complete a couple of lengths of the swim down which followed, before he broke down screaming with cramp. A very awkward seizure at the side of the thigh required Coach Drew to employ a Chinese massage remedy to remove it. Even with such mystical techniques, it took a good 5mins for Elliot's contorted face to relax.

The session ended to the high pitched squeeling sounds that became synonymous with Dartes during the week. A distinctive, and somewhat amusing racket (in small quantities) that one or two of the local kids started to join in with while they waited for their swimming lessons. We do apologise.

Thursday

A gentle fairwell to the BEST Centre in the morning and a day lounging by the pool. A last chance for anyone mad enough to dive in to the fun pool (the air temperature was definitely dropping by now) before our farewell lunch with the girls of the SPAR bakery, and the coach to the airport. Another successful early season training camp behind us, all we had to do now was wait in the departure lounge for 4 hours waiting for our delayed plane. The initial excitement of a 10 Euro voucher each, as compensation for the delay, soon disappeared when the kids discovered that 10 Euros in an airport was worth a bottle of water and a cream cake.

It wasn't all bad news though. It was here, over a Burger King, that one of our fellow travellers popped over to say hello. On a day trip from a resort around the island, they'd seen our banner flying from the hotel balcony (and one day it very nearly did fly away too) and were impressed enough to pop over and tell us. If that was you: thank you and we hope you enjoyed your holiday too.

First Time Experience: Natasha and Kelly

Natasha Crow (SAS) was another of those invited on camp for the first time. We're not entirely sure whose camp she ended up going on though, because we went to Mallorca. Never mind, here's what she thought of her stay in, err, Menorca .

My time in Menorca was amazing. There were lots of things to do, however it was very tiring. The hotel was very nice and comfortable. I got to know everybody really well and we all had a great laugh. I'd love to go again! It's a great experience to swim in an outdoor 50m pool. It was very long though!

Our final first timer in Mallorca was Kelly Smith (Adw). Here's what she had to say:

The months flew by and it was time to set off for Majorca. As the coaches and chaperones kept reminding us throughout the experience: "Your parents have paid for you to come on an Intensive Training Camp not a holiday". The training involved all sorts, like threshold, aerobic, and anaerobic sets. A lot of the sets consisted of swimming your number one stroke at max effort and the land training seemed extremely hard and very tiring at times.

As the days go on you begin to feel more and more tired as you swim and when you are out the pool. But as the coaches say it is not just down to the swimming which is making you tired it is also the amount of sleep you are having and your diet. After six of the sessions we were half way through and had a well deserved break at the beach (even though it started to rain when we got on to the Beach).

After the morning sessions we went to the Spar Bakery round the corner from the BEST Swimming Centre where we had bread, cakes, pasta and pastries. We then got a few hours to chill out in the hotel or go to the fun pool where you get pushed into the freezing cold water. We also went down to the port where there were some shops to buy souvenirs and a beach where we spent the afternoon playing games, going in the sea, and relaxing in the sun.

Majorca 2010 was amazing and if I got the chance to go again I would.