The ISU swimming and diving team tore through the beginning of its season.

The Cyclones (3-1-1, 0-1 Big 12) were undefeated through the first four dual meets, which was the team’s best start since the 2006-07 season, before dropping a meet to Texas Christian this past Friday, Nov. 9.

After rattling off five dual meet competitions in less than a month, Iowa State will head into a different part of their schedule.

The Cyclone swimmers will have this weekend off, before competing in the Kansas Invitational from Nov. 22 to 24 and will not compete after that until Dec. 13. The divers’ next action isn’t until Dec. 6 to 8.

All the down time provides the Cyclones with an opportunity to focus on the little things.

“Maintaining our speed is probably the biggest thing we’re working on this week,” said coach Duane Sorenson. “It’s easy to swim the first 25- or 50-[yards] of a race, but then you have to maintain your tempo and stroke rate.”

Sorenson also emphasized working on consistency in turns and other fundamental aspects of swimming.

When the swimmers begin to get tired in a race, they tend to revert back to old habits that inevitably hurt their times. A major emphasis of practice this week is to maintain proper technique throughout an entire race.

After a month of constant travel and dual meet competitions, the team is happy to have a break from competition.

“It gets really tiring traveling a lot and having meets every weekend, so it’s nice,” said junior Sarah Deis of the time off.

While the team gets a break from traveling and live competition, they still have plenty of work to do. Since they have no competition to save up energy for this weekend, practices are that more difficult.

“We cycle through our training; we up the yardage a little bit and up the intensity,” Sorenson said of the way practices will be conducted this week.

It is all part of the plan.

The time off allows the Cyclones to train a little longer for the Kansas Invitational, which, like the Big 12 Championships, spans multiple days and forces swimmers to swim preliminary and finals races.

Training for these type of events differs from training for dual meets, so having an invitational meet now will benefit the team when the Big 12 meet roles around.

While the Cyclones suffered their first loss last weekend, the team remains positive heading into this phase of their schedule.

“I think we are about where we thought we would be,” said senior Alex Gustafson. “We wanted to win [against] TCU, but I don’t see that as a setback. It was just a learning experience.”