Arrival at Fort Myers, Florida

On Monday I flew from Newark, NJ to Fort Myers, FL as the second part of a big 'openwater tour'. This leg of the trip is all about coaching, as that night I picked up WDSC swimmer, Karyn Jewell at the Fort Myers airport. Karyn is here to swim the 5km and 10km openwater swims, the 10km offers the athletes a berth on the Canadian National openwater team, with the top two Canadians chosen to represent Canada in the World Aquatic Championships this summer in Rome, Italy, while the third, fourth and fifth place swimmer get a chance to swim for the country in a world cup stop in Quebec during the month of July.

The 5km race is on Friday, and the 10km is on Sunday. In the meantime we split our time between training in the ocean (right), and the Florida Gulf Coast University pool. Karyn and Nadine Williams from Silvertide Swim Club in Edmonton, swim just over 11km each day in 'taper' for their big event on Sunday.

This will be Karyn's first ocean race, although she's done some practice swims with VOWSA in English bay to prepare, Sunday's event will also be her first 10km race. She comes into the race with as much experiance as many of the competitors though as she won the 2008 4km Canada Day swim, as well as the 2008 5km age-group National championships.

The race is also the US World Trials, so look for the best US openwater swimmers, including 2008 Olympians Chloe Sutton and Mark Warkentin to be there prepared to perform. USA swimming is also hosting a National Team Select camp this week, which has been featured on Swim Network's openwater Wednesday today.

The event webpage for the week's swims is openwaterfestival.org, you can check out the psych sheet and other things here. Our pictures from the week are here.