Just got back in from spending time with family and relatives for Easter, but here is a quick summary of my day at the meet in Orlando yesterday.
I arrived at the meet midway through the prelims, for the relay was the last event to be swum in the morning. After my swim on the "B" Team 200 Medley Relay on Tuesday (40th place), I was preparing myself for just one swim on Saturday, since it was unlikely that our "B" relay would make top sixteen, so at practice all week, I did low repititions of high quality sprints, such as broken 100's in 50's and 25's. The max yardage for me any one day was probably no more than 2,000. I was just tired. But I digress. When I met my coach at the pool, she greeted me with a bit of some news: The coaches had talked over it, and decided to place me on the "A" relay since they could also utilize the other breaststroker as a butterflier instead. The swim came, and it felt decent, but not great. I got out of the water, and due to the lack of clarity on the scoreboard, an official split could not be determined, but my coach came over and said that the stopwatch splits were between 57.9 and 58.4 (Update, the official split has been posted, and it is a 58.07). That highly exceeded my goal time of 59.3, but then the bittersweet news that we had made finals came. I was excited to be able to swim finals, but another part of me just wanted to leave and take a break from swimming for two weeks. The format for this meet was short course prelims and long course finals, so this would be my first long course swim in 3 years. The relay comes, and during the swim, I cursed myself for not having better stamina. The last 15 yards or so, both the arm and leg muscles in my body just tightened up, and made it hard for me to get full extension. I got out of the water, dejected, but then the backstroker came up to me and slapped me on the back, saying, "You just went a 1:07.5! You demolished the rest of the heat!" By the time I turned around to look at the butterfliers, the field had already evened up, so I didn't believe him at first. (FYI, according to the swim time converter at Swimmingworldmagazine.com, my official split, 1:07.45, converts to a 57.74 in short course yards). Thanks to the site Floswimming.org, I was able to go online and watch my swim. The link is at this site. For informational purposes, I am the second swimmer in Lane 7 (second from the top) from Tampa Bay Aquatics. Looking back at the swim, I can only think that if I had just finished the race with more energy (I went out a 30.3, came back in a 37.1), I could have done at least a 1:06. Oh well...
I think I will probably stay out of the pool for about two weeks now, maybe run, bike, and go the gym for some weights and muscle toning, and enjoy my spring break in another week.
Hello
thanks!i must say your times are very good as well!no i dont...im from south africa and dont have any relatives in the states.why?is there a van der merwe there?
