That’s one rather excited child safely deposited at the airport….

Today I am attending the Romford last chance meet in Crawley and I had a lovely surprise to encounter with Yul. Thank you so much for your time, Theo, Olivia and myself really appreciate it 🥰❤️🙏 I was so impressed with all the information that you shared with us and for being so kind, many thanks🙏🤗 You guys are an amazing team at Skool and a big thank you for all the help and support that you are offering to the swimmers and to the parents too🙏❤️🙏

1. I feel absolutely on top of the world after each shower. Energized to the moon! 2. The initial shock is now just as bad as it was on Day 1 3. But what changed is that I no longer think about it. I just go and execute without second thoughts. 4. I will 100% continue with it. No more warm water usage from me. Save energy haha. Final thoughts: taking cold showers (=something difficult for me) trained my discipline muscle in the brain (it's not a real muscle of course but there's a part in the brain that grows stronger from doing difficult things). And that discipline had positive effects on my work ethic (doing hard things and being consistent with it!) and other things like putting my phone away for hours to connect more deeply with my family. Wonderful experience, I recommend it to everyone 😊 Anybody else have experience with cold showers? Let me know in the comments I'm curious

So last weekend parallel to the nationals I went to a road to nationals competition in Stuttgarter. I raced the 50, 100 and 200 back and also the 50 free. Saturday the competition went quite long so my last race was 200 back at 9pm. At first I race the 100 back and I went 1:04,14 which was a PB but I couldn‘t really think before the race as I was super nervous for no reason. Therefor I couldn‘t use any of the learned techniques because I felt like I had a blackout before the race. Afterwards I looked up and thought the race wasn‘t good since I couldn‘t do all the things I trained except my kicks underwaters. Afterwards I couldn‘t really enjoy my race since it wasn‘t as planned and I was really nervous. Half an hour later I had the 50 free where I was more relaxed but I also felt that I already had raced something so I went 26,72. Quite happy with that race except that I took one breath and I felt like I didn‘t need that breath. Then I had a long brake to cheer for the others who were racing breaststroke. Before my 200 back I talked with my coach which was quite good to get less nervous. Then I had the 200back where I wanted to split 1:07 and 1:10. I actually split 1:08 and 1:13 to make it 2:22,30. So I was really happy with how I started the race but then I was dying a bit at the end. After that we went to meet the others who already ordered my food at the restaurant so I could directly eat and also watched my 200 back on the livestream. The day after @Florian Sessler also went 2:22 at the nationals in 200 back but I was still a little bit faster. Also in the 100 and 50 back I‘m gonna chase you know. On Sunday I only swam 50 back which was 29,33 so it‘s also a PB but I know I can go faster and also I felt like the light race suit was too light for me for the 50 back. So I PBd in all my backstroke events and now I just need to keep working hard to go again in 2 weeks at regionals. Also a highlight of the event was that team ITALY where at the meet with 4 swimmers including Nicolo Martinenghi. He was supposed to swim the 100 breaststroke next to my friend but unfortunately Martinenghi was a little bit injured so he couldn‘t race. Also Alessandro Bori was racing and made a new competition record in the 100 free in the heats just to be broken by his teammate Giovanni Carraro in the final with a 49,77. Also the champions race was exciting to wathc

For the last five days I was in Berlin to compete at the German nationals. We arrived on Wednesday and went for a long warm up in the competition pool immediately. I felt strong and confident going into my first race on Thursday morning which was the 100 back. This was my first race at a national championship (I never competed on the age group level) so I was extremely nervous, but I wouldn‘t say it was holding me back. I was able to use what I learned and use the Adrenalin for on extra push in the race. My focus was on another level, that I never experienced before The race itself was alright. My frequency was much lower than usual. For me this proofs that I was correct when I said to my coach at our training camp that we should focus more on speed and not on volume. This actually happened to some of my teammates too. So what I learn from that is that I need to focus much more on frequency and speed over water, because after rewatching the video and comparing the splits my coach timed we found out that I‘m falling off over water and then catch up on the turn and under waters again. The final time was 1:02,86 (30,37 split for the first 50) I placed 43. overall On Friday and Saturday I had no races. I was in the water once on Friday and twice on Saturday. Felt better every time and found my rhythm. We experimented on the warm ups and the broken 200s I did felt strong. Today (Sunday) was my final race - the 200 back. I was even more confident going into this race and my tactics worked out. Unfortunately the same thing that I already experienced on the hundred happened. Low Frequency, good turns and underwaters but not able to keep the speed to the next wall. Broke my PB by almost 2 full seconds so I‘m still happy with it: 2:24,40 -> 2:22,68 Sadly I wasn‘t able to beat the time @Cedric Wittmann set at his competition yesterday so big respect to him. Cedric I‘ll get you next time :) I‘m on my way back home and even more motivated for the rest of the season.