State Meet (Part 2)

After the state meet, I realize why I keep swimming and competing, besides the obvious, that it keeps me in shape. It's the camaraderie. We were there to support each other in every race... we shared war stories, if you will. I even came home with a battle wound on my foot. One of our swimmers made the national top ten list in her 1000 yard event, we had enough swimmers to enter a couple of relays, we watched an 87 year old complete the Brute Squad meaning he swam the meet's 3 toughest events (1650 yd free, 200 yd butterfly and 400 yd IM)... we even saw a 47 year old break a national record in the 100 yd freestyle with a time of 47.47 seconds (incomprehensible for me). He beat all the other swimmers in this event, including the younger folks. To give you an idea of how fast he was... the winner of the youngest age group swam it in 52.78 seconds, more than 5 seconds slower. For all the race results, click here.



Today's events for me were mixed... I had a great 500 yd freestyle race. Turns out, I was seeded in the same heat as my best swim friend Karen and we ended up swimming right next to each other in lane 9 and lane 10. She was scaring me all morning with her incredible concentration... iPod in the ears and avoiding contact with all of us. I knew this race would be close as we swim together at practice and are nearly the same speed. Her seed time was faster than mine, but I felt stronger this year than last. She was hoping for this scenario... swimming side by side so she could pace off me, but secretly, I was dreading it. Off the blocks she tore down the lane... I'm thinking to myself, "this seems a little fast, but I can't let her get too far ahead or I'll never catch her". For the entire race, we were never more than a half-body length apart... it must have been exciting for our teammates to watch. We could hear them yelling at us at every turn. I was slightly trailing her for the first 18 lengths of the race... then somewhere during the last 2 lengths I managed to catch and out-touch her at the finish by 4/10ths of a second. We both shaved several seconds off our times from last year. I swam it in 7:18.22 dropping 14 seconds from last year's time.

Karen and me after the race...



My other 2 races were backstroke events which I normally love swimming... but I wasn't happy with either backstroke swim today. Both were slower than last year's races and in the 200, I ended up turning too close to the wall and banging my foot hard on the side of the pool... ouchie! Then on the 4th turn I was a little too far from the wall. Despite all of that, I ended up with a first place gold medal in this race for my age group. Go figure. Anyway, next year I'll increase my backstroke training... either that, or I'll change it up and swim something else. All in all, a fun time and I'm looking forward to it again next year.