Swim meet

So it's been 20 (cough, cough) plus years since my last swim meet. Needless to say I was a nervous wreck, but still excited. I was slated to do three events: 50 free, 50 back, and the 4x50 free relay.

SWA is making its debut in the Richardson Corporate Challenge and one of the events was swimming. We had a team of about 10 of us ranging from our early 30's to our early 50's. Making the master's requirement was no issue this year since most of us are over 40.

I've been working out fairly regularly, putting in 2-3 workouts a week in the pool, but doing mostly distance. I found a good website for creating swim workouts that have helped out a ton in not getting bored while still having strong workouts. I've been using them for triathlon training, but they have worked out just as well for the meet training.

The first race I had was the 50 free. I was pumped and only up against 3 other women in my bracket and age group. The gun went off and I could see that I was battling one other woman, but pulling ahead of her quickly on the first lap. I reached the end, did my turn and realized, "Oh shit!". I'd turned about 2 feet too early and missed the wall. (I was worried about this in practice 2 weeks before. That pool has a strange illusion to it that you think you're closer than you are.) I had to do sort of a dogpaddle back to touch the wall to make it legal. I was pissed!!! But that anger turned into energy. I had about a full body length to make up for in 25 meters and I nearly caught the girl. We touched the wall within a 1/2 second of each other at around 37 seconds. I wonder if I hadn't missed the wall how I would've done. Maybe around 33-34 seconds?

The backstroke went a bit better. I still was just a bit too far from the wall on this one as well, but was able to touch it and get a bit of a pushoff from it. I think I ended up at about :42 seconds. For me, I was content with this time because I'm not much of a backstroker.

The relay was the best event all the way around. We'd stacked our team with our fastest four, two of which were a couple who met and swam in college, Danee and Jason. Danee had won silver in the overall 50 free for women. The gun went off. Jim started us off well and got us about 2 body lengths ahead of the competition. I was behind him and kept the lead going with about the same distance. Danee smoked it and moved us further ahead. Finally Jason's anchor leg made us by far the leaders. We ended up taking home overall gold for the relay, a full 6+ seconds ahead of the nearest competition. Whee!

Fun stuff. Now I would love to get involved with Master's level swimming to see if I could compete more. Like I need another excuse for competition, right?