AMYMSA Swim Meet

Race: Master's swim meet
Date: 17 November 2013
Location: Greensburg, PA

I had a great time at this swim meet. I swam four events and set a new personal best in one of them. But even if that were not true, I would still feel good. I gave my swims 100% effort. I made some mistakes, but my intentions were true.

Event #2: 100 yard freestyle
I swam this in 1:07.30, which was less than a second off my personal best. My dive was deep and I didn't surface for a while. Then I started swimming with big, long strokes with a lot of power and rapid kicking. When the race results come out, I will look to see if this first 50 yards was under 29 seconds because it sure felt like my fastest 50 ever [actually, it was far from my best time: 31.89]. The problem with this is that I still had another 50 yards to go and I started to feel burning in my legs. Later, after my swim, I felt sick from the lactic acid and was worried I would not recover in time for my next event. But after 15 min I was ready to go. Eventually I will gain the necessary experience I need to pace myself, but definitely not today!

Event #6: 50-yard freestyle
This was my new personal best. I swam it in 29.30 seconds, besting my old time by 0.23 seconds. I breathed once toward the end of the first pool length (mostly out of habit), and took about 4 breaths during the last 25 yards. John K. said my finish looked good, and I have a bit of a jammed middle finger to prove it. I hit the touch pad with a lot of velocity. Unlike my first event, I was not out of breath or overly exhausted after this swim, which is good, because I had to swim in the next event!

Event #7: 200-yard backstroke
I was disappointed in my 200 backstroke at the last meet, so I thought I'd try it out again. The problem is that in the intervening 2 weeks, I think I only practiced my backstroke once. So this was just a repeat of an over-par swim. I finished in about 3:11, which was 3 seconds off my best time. I did better today than two weeks ago, but I still made the same error: initiating my turns too close to the wall, and swallowing water at pretty much every turn. At least I counted my laps correctly this time! Oh boy, my legs and arms were both burning at the end of this swim. And my next event was...less than 10 minutes away.

Event #8: 50 breaststroke
I finished in 39.91, about 2.5 seconds off my best time. I remember staying even with at least two swimmers during the first 25 yards. I was watching them out of the corner of my eye, and I saw that their stroke rate was faster than mine, yet they were no faster in the water. Then I turned at the wall and as I began to swim the last 25 yards I saw my competitors gain a widening lead. I did what I could to keep up, but my arms were feeling really heavy.

AMYMSA Swim Meet

Race: AMYMSA Masters Swim Meet
Date: 3 November 2013
Location: Clearfield, Pa.

I had a great time, and I am so happy that this is true of almost all my meets. I swam the 500-yard Freestyle in 7:09.82, which broke my old record of 7:28.09. Interesting pattern in the numbers there, you see it? I also set a personal best in the 25-yard Butterfly, which I swam in 14.58 seconds (an improvement of 1.2%). Then I swam the 200-yard Backstroke in 3:08.00, which was just 0.09 seconds off my personal best. Lastly, I swam the 100-yard Freestyle in 1:09.13, which was about 2.5 seconds slower than my best time. I don't know what went "wrong" with this last swim, but it doesn't matter. I am satisfied with something under 1:10, especially given a well below-average amount of swim training the past month.

AMYMSA Swim Meet

Race: Masters Swim Meet (scy)
Date: February 3, 2013
Location: Franklin, Pa.

I am elated to have done two events today that I had never done before: 200 butterfly and 200 backstroke. Let me set the plot. Frankin, Pa. is 2 hours from home and I figured I would be antsy the entire drive. But I wasn't. At the pool I swam a 500-yard warmup prior to the start of the meet. It felt easy and fast. I got out of the lane pool and spent time in the separate warmup pool to keep warm, all the while I was talking with someone from another team. Still not nervous. Then I realized they had opened up a sprint lane and I wanted to do a practice dive. It was perfect. My first event, the 200-yard butterfly would be in about 15 minutes. I ate a package of fruit snacks and drank some water. This was not because I was nervous; rather, I hadn't eaten anything in a couple hours and I wanted a little boost of sugar for the impending great feat of swimming that I thought might just kill me. Yes, now I was nervous. But I was only kidding about the dying part. I knew I wouldn't die. I just wanted to make a good effort on this swim without having mini-disasters like goggle failure or muscle cramps spoil my initial attempt at this incredibly grueling goal. The 200-yard butterfly is viewed as the toughest event in Master's swimming (though plenty of people do it).

Event #1: 200-yard Butterfly
Time: 3:30.42
Age Group Rank: 2 out of 2

My dive at the start of the 200 butterfly looks good but I lift my left leg up, causing me to plunge too steeply into the water.

My water entry started out well but doesn't look so good now.

The first 100 yards was soooo easy. I can't believe it! My spilt times show I completed the first 50 yards in 41.19 seconds and the second 50 yards in 47.88 seconds. Maybe I found this easy because I really can swim these shorter distances harder. My 50-fly and 100-fly swims are indeed faster than the pace I was putting forth, but of course that is part of the strategy to go a little slower so you can last longer. My third 50 yards took 57.43 seconds to complete, and my fourth 50-yard segment took 1:03.92. Obviously, I was unable to maintain the pace I had started with, and by that last 50 yards I had terrible form and was struggling to bring my arms out of the water. But I didn't care one bit. I did the 200-fly. I finished, and I didn't have to hang on to the wall at any point. I didn't swallow water, my goggles worked great, and no muscle cramps. All my teammates were cheering me on and it felt good (Dan deserves special mention because he swam this event simply to keep me on pace and support me).

Event #2: 200-yard backstroke
Time: 3:07.91
Age Group Rank: 3 out of 3

This event was fairly late in the meet, so I had plenty of time to recover from the fly. My backstroke start was poor (but I don't practice it, so no surprise), but my stroke was strong and efficient. It felt leisurely, in fact. I was holding down my stroke rate to conserve energy and this seems to have worked well. My split times were much more equal: 44.86, 46.57, 51.10, and 45.38. I definitely sped up on that last 50 yards because Kim was in the lane next to me. Kim and I had spoken briefly before the race and we talked about how I would beat her, but not by a lot. Therefore, I was quite challenged to see that she was keeping up with me for the whole swim. I did not want her to beat me, so I sped up as fast as I could on the last 25 yards. I actually thought I beat her by half a body length, but I must not have punched the wall as well as she did. She beat me by a third of a second. She was pleased and grateful that I had provided a challenge to beat--in a way similar to what Dan had done for me on the 200-fly. It always ends well, doesn't it? I beat my seed time by 15 seconds, so i am happy with this swim. However, I need much more experience with the timing of my turns. Sometimes I turned too soon and sometimes too late. In fact there was one turn where I flipped over long before I was at the wall, so I immediately flipped back on my back to take another stroke. That would have disqualified me if any official was watching. Please don't tell!

Event #3: 25-yard butterfly
Time: 14.76 seconds
Age Group Rank: 2 out of 2

Why not more butterfly? I had a great dive and dolphin kicked for quite a distance. My dolphin kick needs work, but today it seemed to get me to where I wanted to go. I then did butterfly strokes as fast and strong as I could and I felt I was doing my best work. My time was 0.05 seconds faster than my personal best. Despite it breaking a record for me, I thought I was going to break that record by a greater amount. Next time I am sure I will!

To sum, I had a great, great meet. Friendships there are part of it, and my performances are the other part. Happy.