Phelps being hounded for autographs by swimmers

Sunday night after the One Hour Swim I went to the Long Beach Grand Prix with my coaches Nancy and Ahelee. I’ve really never been to a meet as a just a spectator and it was cool to start with a meet that had so many big names in it! All kinds of swim stars were floating around… Phelps, Grevers, Katajima, Lezak, Hardy, Soni, Kukors, Vollmer, Hoff, Sutton, Pelton, and more! I’d also like to point out that a local Masters Swimmer who has been a bit of a regular since summer at SPMA meets was in the mix as well. Tamas Kerekjarto of FAST was in the A final of the 200 yard free and the 200 yard fly! Now I feel much better about losing the 100m fly to him by like 12 seconds at Santa Clarita back in November!

We got to Belmont (the same pool that I swam in last month for SPMA Championships) early to watch warm ups. The areas non-Athletes could access were pretty well protected, but I did get to hang out behind the scenes a bit with LiveSwim who was handling the live streaming for SwimNetwork. Chris and his guys were out in full force with cameras all over that pool and up on the diving towers! While I was back there I ran into one of my training buddies from Santa Maria who was there coaching which was cool.

Before the meet itself actually got started I worked my way back to the bleachers so I could watch the races. We sat in the good section… the bleachers down by the deep end… it was super crowded and they were turning people away from that area who didn’t already have seats w/in 30 min of the doors opening. Luckily Nancy grabbed us seats early.

I’m a little behind on the news in regards to this meet, there are plenty of recaps and results out there so I’m just going to give you a few of my observations and some pictures…