My First Real Insti Practice

On the 29th of September, when we( IITM contingent) left for Bombay for the 43rd Inter IIT sports meet, the initial thought that came to some of us would have been-- "It has ended, and we have endured it all". The 'It' here is Insti Practice, which is much more demanding than Inter IIT itself.

It all started, eventually, in the Anna University pool. Promises were made, regarding our pool, last semester, but it just seemed that everyone involved was having an extended holiday. So we went about our stuff.

I was putting fight to get into the Insti Team this year. We warmed up by swimming 1 km and then the drills and sprints would follow. The sets were mostly of 100m. The coach would be looking down on his stopwatch, and would blow the whistle every 1m 30s, and off all of us 'had to go'. Now, it so happened that when I stretched myself to the limit(over many sets), I could just about finish in 90 seconds. After every 75m, I would see tattu and co., the heart of the swimming team, chilling out at the other end. I would think to myself, 'One more lap, then peace'. And the moment I reached the other end, the whistle would blow.

We used to practice every alternate evening for atleast 2 to 3 hrs. I would almost certainly spend most of the time swimming, always playing the catch up game, knowing there was no end to it at any end of the pool! This did kinda make my body more like pulp, but it did increase my stamina. And after all that, the team had to endure johnny for another half an hour before getting out. I will not go deep into it here, as it deserves another blog.


There was a break in practice because of 1st quiz, after which we resumed practice. Quizzes ended on 19th September, and there were only 10 days to go. So we started coming in the morning and evening. No need to say that it was 'rapemax'. After the gruelling evening practice, I would not even be fit enough to see a movie. I slept everywhere, in class, in my room, in the mess sometimes.Even while walking, I was starting to see birds by now. The only reason I did not sleep in the pool maybe, was because I was in water.

We had a practice match a day before leaving for Inter IIT, with a team that had come from outside campus. Most of them were excellent swimmers with a clear goal--"Get to the Ball". One member of our team would pass the ball and all 6 of them would dart towards him. Because of their amazing speed, they were, actually bothering us, though they did not have any ball handling skills. It was quite funny watching from outside. They did manage in panicking some of us with this approach, but we won comfortably.

Finally, it was 28th, the last day of practice. I didn't get into the pool due to ear pain. We just did some gen practice and then we had a final pep talk from the coaches. I left the pool motivated and exhausted.