Paul Kornfeld

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European Swimming World Cup Tour

I am writing to everyone from my hotel room in Stockholm, Sweden. I just arrived here this morning for the first stop of the European circuit of the FINA Swimming World Cups. I will be swimming the breaststroke events (50, 100, 200 scm) at each stop in Stockholm, Moscow, and Berlin. This will be a great chance to get some fast racing in against good international competition. It will be a lot of racing (6 times in 9 days), but will be a great start to the Olympic season getting some more international experience while representing TEAM CANADA. I will post more about Stockholm and the competition soon, but wanted to give you some general information about the competition first.

Main landing page for all updates, results, information and webcam: FINA World Cup page

Swimming Canada public release: “Canadian Swimmers kick start the Olympic season at FINA World Cups”

Competition Dates:

15-16 Oct. 2011	Stockholm (SWE)
18-19 Oct. 2011	Moscow (RUS)
22-23 Oct. 2011	Berlin (GER)

Live Webcam: Click here (You can watch the races afterwards using the player)

Prelims: 8:40 am start

Finals: 3:40 pm start (It is 8 hours ahead of Calgary (MST) in Sweden)

A special thanks to Swimming Canada, Calgary Foundation for Swimming Excellence, and SIACharts.com for helping fund my travel and competitions. It is invaluable to have support to be able to compete in these meets. -Paul

Posted by Paul Kornfeld | October 12, 2011 | Categories: Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Fall Training Underway

A new season is upon us as I have started my preparation for the 2012 Canadian Olympic Swimming Trials which are March 27-April 1, 2012. I have been back in the water now for two and a half weeks and am pretty excited with my training already. This is going to be a great season where I will give everything I have to be the best I can be and leave everything in the pool!

We got to do some different cross-training the last two weeks, which I really enjoy where we went hiking/biking in Kananaskis Provincial Park. The first hike we did was called Misty Ridge Trial. It was a slow uphill climb through some brush then over a ridge, however it was absolutely freezing out and snowed on us most of the way!! I did not anticipate snow at the end of August in the mountains. The second hike was Headwall Lakes Trial. It was a wet and cold hike as well bc of all the rain/snow from the day before. Hike wasn’t too bad as I bushwhacked a lot of it until the very end when we got up to the lakes. I had a little energy coming home so I decided to do some trail running at the end.

The next week, we went on a beautiful hike, Pocaterra Ridge Trail. We started this hike in the Highway Pass, so we were already at really high altitude and then it has a really steep climb to the top of the ridge that makes the best athletes slow. The weather this day was absolutely gorgeous and you could see mountain ranges all around you. The next day, I went for a bike ride through the mountains instead of hiking to get some more cardio and leg strength training in. Below is some awesome pictures from the hike.

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Also some exciting news to look forward to. I will be competing in three FINA World Cup Circuits this October over in Europe! More details will follow later, but my schedule next month will be:

15-16 Oct. 2011	Stockholm (SWE)
18-19 Oct. 2011	Moscow (RUS)
22-23 Oct. 2011	Berlin (GER)

Posted by Paul Kornfeld | September 15, 2011 | Categories: Calgary | Leave a comment

US Nationals at Stanford University

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I will complete my long course season this week at the 2011 USA Swimming National Championships here at Stanford University from August 2-6. This meet is a bit of a homecoming for me seeing how I spent 5 years at Stanford for my college years and one year after working. When I saw US Nationals was at Stanford, I knew I had to go. This will be another chance to swim fast and a great chance to see a bunch of friends in the Stanford area.

I will be representing Team Canada at the meet, but I still feel like I am representing Stanford at this pool. Since this meet is a selection meet for the US team for Pan American Games, they are not allowing foreigners (those whose sport nationality is for another country and thus cannot represent the US internationally) to swim in their finals. So, I will just be competing in the morning preliminary heats. I will be swimming some relays for Team Canada in the finals Tuesday and Saturday night.

Schedule:

Tuesday: 100 breast (1:03.46), 400 free relay (3:24.44)

Thursday: 100 breast time trial

Saturday: 200 breast, 400 medley relay

Prelims begin at 9 am PT, Finals at 6 pm PT

Live Results: http://www.swmeets.com/Realtime/LC%20Nationals/2011/

Tickets: click here

US Nationals coverage and webcast: click here

Posted by Paul Kornfeld | August 1, 2011 | Categories: California | Leave a comment

Canadian Summer Swimming Nationals underway

The 2011 Canadian Summer Swimming Nationals are underway here in Pointe-Claire, Quebec. This meet will be a qualifying meet for the Nations Cup (Tri-Meet with France vs. Brazil vs. Canada) and the Pan-American Games. Nationals also has some National B teams from Mexico, Denmark, France, and Brazil competing this weekend that will up the level of competition.

My schedule of events:

Thursday – 200 Free (result – 1:54.67, 26th overall, best time)

Friday – 100 Breast (result – 1:03.16, 6th overall), 4×200 fr relay (1:53.09 split, total 7:34.08, 3rd overall)

Saturday – 50 Breast (result – 29.10, 7th overall), 4×100 free relay (51.59 split, total 3:26.05, 2nd overall)

Sunday – 200 Breast (result – 2:18.03, 5th overall), 4×100 medley relay (1:03.7 split, 5th overall)

Live results can be found here:

Don’t forget to check out the live webcast of finals tomorrow night at http://swimcanweb.tv/

“That some achieve great success, is proof to all that others can achieve it as well.”

~Abraham Lincoln~

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Posted by Paul Kornfeld | July 21, 2011 | Categories: Montreal | Leave a comment

Fran Crippen Memorial Swim Meet of Champions

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The Fran Crippen Memorial Swim Meet of Champions (SMOC for short) was a lot of fun. The first day I swam the 100 free in a 53.6 in the morning and swam on a UCSC relay at night which took fourth splitting a 53.3. On Saturday, I swam the 200 breast making the A finals and finishing sixth in a 2:21.5. The last day I swam the 100 breast finishing tenth in a 1:04.9. The breaststrokes were a little slower than I wanted, but I am working a lot on technique and hopefully the changes will show up soon.

The weekend I got to stay with some former Stanford teammates with Patrick Simpkins and current Stanford senior Michael Zoldos. It was also great to catch up with them, John Criste, Chad La Tourette, and the Zaich’s at a great dinner Saturday night and throughout the meet.

Find full results link here:

I will be training for the next week in San Diego on the Coronado Island with my racing group from UCSC. It is a beautiful spot in sunny California. I love training outside and will look to get some good work in this week before we start tapering and focusing on more speed work.

Feel free to follow me on Twitter @pkornfeld for more real-time info and random tid-bits.

“Accept the challenges, so you may feel the exhilaration of victory.”

~George S. Patton~

Posted by Paul Kornfeld | June 27, 2011 | Categories: California | 2 Comments

Hawaii Recap and looking forward to Summer Racing

Here are some photos from the Hawaii Training camp:

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All images are courtesy of Rick Pelletier. Check out all his pictures at Rick Pelletier’s Flickr here.

Sorry it has been a while since I last posted. I have taken some time updating my website so feel free to check out the other page links above too. More updates will follow as I get some more time this summer too. I was in Hawaii again for a training camp for a couple of weeks in May where we did some heavy training.

It was great to swim outdoors again in the sunshine. I really enjoyed being able to get away and fully concentrate on swimming again with my team. We did some really heavy training and did the most meters in a week that I have ever done going around 90 km in one week and totaling around 155,000 meters overall. This included some long three-hour 10,000 meter practices. It was really important during this time to recover in between practices as much as possible so you were ready for the next practice. My freestyle got a lot better during the camp and the results showed at a meet the week after where I went a best time in the 100 free in 53.40 seconds. Hopefully building this solid training base during May will lead to great things this summer in July!

I will be heading down to Mission Viejo, California for the Meet of Champions where I will be competing from June 24-26. This will be my big test of the summer, so I am getting prepared to swim fast before summer nationals.

Posted by Paul Kornfeld | June 16, 2011 | Categories: Hawaii | Leave a comment

World Trials Recap

The Canadian World Trials didn’t go as well as I had hoped and planned. I did not qualify for the World Championship team this summer and will set my sights on other goals this summer to set me up for a position to make the Olympic team next year. I will still have a chance to qualify for the Pan American games this summer at the Summer Nationals for Canada.

I finished fourth in the 200 breast in a 2:15.27 after going out well but struggling the last 50. I finished fifth in the 100 breast in a 1:02.62 turning in a 29.12. I scratched the 50 breast and 200 IM to focus on a 100 breast time trial on the last day, but that didn’t go as well as I had hoped either. I know I can go much faster so I will be working hard to get my times back to where I know they can be.

I will be taking some time off before restarting my training again. It is always good to take a physical and mental break after a long hard season to refocus and get motivated for the next season. Thanks for all your support, thoughts, and prayers during the meet. I will keep you updated on my travels and training as much as I can.

-Paul

Posted by Paul Kornfeld | April 11, 2011 | Categories: Victoria | 1 Comment

Results and Webcast

Results can be found here: https://swimming.ca/liveresults/11worldtrials/index.html

Webcast can be found here of finals starting at 5:45 pm PT: http://swimcanweb.tv/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2&Itemid=2&lang=en

Now off to the pool for the 200 Breast!!

Posted by Paul Kornfeld | March 30, 2011 | Categories: Victoria | Leave a comment

2011 Swimming World Championship Trials

The Canadian Spring Nationals are finally here! I am currently in Victoria getting ready for the big meet of the spring that will feature Canada’s best try compete for a chance to represent Canada this summer at the 2011 FINA World Swimming Championships in Shanghai, China. Some breaststrokers from Cal swimming will be coming up to swim against us also to get their FINA standards to qualify for their countries including Sean Mahoney, Damir Dugonjic, Martti Aljand, and Martin Liivamagi. Qualifying is pretty simple. If you win an event you qualify, if you get 2nd and are under the FINA ‘A’ standard, you will also make the team.

Competition will run from Wednesday, March 30th to Saturday, April 2nd at the Saannich Commonwealth Place. Preliminary sessions start at 10am, and Finals start at 6pm. I will be swimming all the breaststroke events and 200 IM. Here is my schedule below:

Wednesday: 200 Breast
Thursday: 100 Breast
Friday: 50 Breast
Saturday: 200 IM, 400 Medley Relay

Phych Sheet available here:

I will update this post when I find a better results link, but Swimming Canada’s event page with all the information can be found here:

CBC coverage will air on Saturday, April 2nd from 4 to 6pm and Saturday April 9th 12-1pm EST. In addition to their television broadcast, CBC will partner with Swimming Canada in providing a live web stream of finals on their website at http://www.cbc.ca

Posted by Paul Kornfeld | March 28, 2011 | Categories: Victoria | Leave a comment

CIS Stroke Camp

I love working with kids and especially being able to give back some of my knowledge and passion about swimming back to them. Definitely one of the benefits of being a professional athlete is having young swimmers look up to you and the opportunity to inspire, encourage, teach, and motivate them to be better swimmers and better people.

During the CIS weekend in late February, I was involved in a stroke camp for young kids aged 10-14. We had a great turnout of about 100 kids from all across Alberta, but mainly from swimmers in the Calgary area. We ran the stroke camp on a Saturday afternoon right before the last night of finals of the CIS Championships of University Swimming where the Dinos brought home the team title in both the men and women’s divisions.

We split up into four groups where a local coach was paired with an elite swimmer to demonstrate. The four stations were breaststroke turns, backstroke starts, back to breast turns, and underwater push-offs. I was in the underwater push-off/ kick off the wall station with 3-time Olympian, silver medalist, and now coach Tom Ponting and worked with Lindsay Delmar who is a swimmer on the Racing Group with me at UCSC that I train with who is one of the top 200 free and 200 flyers in the country.

The pictures below show a little glimpse of the event. The feedback we got from the parents was really encouraging to hear afterwards as well. It is always an honor for little kids to look up to you and it is something I always love to be apart of. Hopefully some of the kids will have better streamlines and underwater kicks off the wall, but also that they will be encouraged to have fun in swimming and pursue their dreams too. I often look back at my swimming career and think about certain athletes along the way who helped inspire me to be the swimmer I am today.