**Results are available here
Video of the meet is being posted by LiveSwim.net here
warm up in the competition pool
Today was the Cal Tech Pentathlon which is one of my favorite meets and it didn’t disappoint! We had over 200 swimmers in attendance, and despite rain in the forecast it stayed sunny until the very last moment on the pool deck. One of the best parts of today for me was the turnout from my team. We had one of the bigger groups of swimmers of any team at the pool and everybody did awesome! We had a lot of best times, team records, and some first time swimmers which is always exciting. A lot of my favorite swimmers from the rest of SPMA were out today too, and I finally got to meet a couple people in person for the first time that I’ve “met” online through the blog. Personally I had a really good day in the pool and I’m very happy with my swims… well I wasn’t so excited about my backstroke, but everything else was on point.
My first race was the 50 fly and I was in heat 25 or 26, because like I said… there were a TON of people there! I felt like I started real strong and felt good through the whole first length. I got to the wall at an awkward point and ended up doing a bit of a glide into my turn instead of a short half stroke. On the way back my feel for the water deteriorated a bit, but I still felt fast. I ended up finishing with a 26.08 which is a personal best in yards by about half a second so I’m pretty stoked with that! I really want to get into the 25′s before the season is over.
50 Fly
Up next was the 50 back and honestly I wasn’t really looking forward to it. I’m just not connecting in backstroke these days. I ended up swimming a 31.68 which is slower than what I swam last year, as a matter of fact it was barely faster than my breaststroke! Yikes… I need some work there!
While I was waiting around for the 50 breaststroke I was telling everybody I had a good 50 breast in me today, I could feel it! Well it turns out I was right… I swam 32.23 which is about half a second faster than my previous best time and really fast for me. I’m starting to kind of like the 50 breast despite having been a devout non-breaststroker most of my life. I’ve been tweaking my stroke a lot here in an attempt to get better at it. I’m trying to throw my hands a lot faster and I’ve added the dolphin kick to my pulldown. I’d be pretty excited if I could get this thing into the 31′s.
50 Breaststroke action
My 50 free time was middle of the road, not slow but not my best work. The time would have been a little bit better if I would have timed my turn better. I barely made contact with the wall and that sapped a lot of my momentum. I still managed a 25.49, but it should have been better.
The last race of the day was the 100 IM which was a breakthrough swim for me last year at this meet. I had similar success this year! I dropped about 2 seconds off my previous best! I think an improved breast stroke and just better fitness in general played a major role here. It hurt pretty bad when I finished, but the swim itself felt really solid and I’m really happy with the time.
Overall I ended up 4th in my age group which is cool with me seeing as I pretty much got rocked last year. I’m still not in danger of winning, but I’m a lot closer to being a contender in some events.
Despite having 2 cameras and an iPhone on me I didn’t take very many pictures… my girlfriend did manage to catch all my races (except my backstroke) on video however. The video and a few pictures are below.
turning
this pic felt very "this is SPARTA!!!!" to me :)
