Today was the last day in the pool for USMS SCY Nationals, I wasn’t scheduled for any races but I dropped in for about an hour to hang out and swim a little bit. I got there just in time for the 100 freestyle. I got to watch Rowdy Gaines re-break his 100 freestyle national record, and I shot some video for 2 of my teammates.
Rowdy finishing the 100 free in record time
If you were out at the meet this weekend Floswimming did an awesome job of getting footage of hundreds of heats of swimming. Check out their Nationals Coverage page to look for your swims. Races are listed on the left side if you scroll down a little bit.
Here’s a different angle on my 100 fly. You can really see a lot more of my start and kicking from this vantage.
And a little more of my 50 free…
Tomorrow I’m doing the Millerton Mile which also happens to be the 1 mile open water championships this year. I keep hearing rumors that it’s pretty cold, hopefully it’s at least upper 60′s.
Today was day 3 of nationals and day 2 for me. I got to the pool this morning around 8:30 and it was already hot out. It only got hotter from there so I decided to wrap myself in a black rubber suit, that’s an excellent idea right? I spent all day drinking water, Gatorade, Cytomax, and whatever else I could forage out of the Gold Medal Sponsor tent.
Once I got myself situated I went in search of my last place medal from yesterday’s 200 breaststroke. Thanks to the magic of Disqualification I got myself all the way up to 8th place, whoo! So there is my big medal from the meet. Next year my haul should hopefully be more substantial.
My first event today was the 50 free. When we stepped up on the blocks the dude in lane 8 took a tumble into the pool. I think the start from the other side of the course caught him off guard and he lost his balance. Once he got back up on the blocks they had us stand down and wait for the other course to start another heat. After 5 minutes of getting on and off the blocks we finally got started. I think I had a pretty good race. I took one breath out and 2 on the way back. I came in at a 25.39 which is a best time (dropped from 25.49). I wore my new B70 and it felt pretty good in this event. Heidi got some video from the race…
Up next was a couple hours of hanging out while waiting for my 100 fly. I got to see all kinds of people and watch a bunch of friends race. I baked in the sun, but I had a lot of fun watching 1600 people swim their brains out today. I also got to meet Rowdy Gaines and talk to him briefly. He’s sponsored by Blueseventy now and was set up back in their booth signing autographs and taking pictures. He was super nice and took the time to talk with everybody, not to mention extremely fast in the pool today! 50 free in a 21.3 today, smoking!
Eventually my magic moment arrived… the 100 fly. I have mixed feelings about this race. My time was decent, I swam a 59.30, but I wasn’t totally happy with my swim. I decided to wear the B70 for this race and I don’t think it was the right call. It felt like I had a gallon of water sloshing around in my suit dragging me down. I don’t know if it was just air in the suit and it felt like water, but whatever it was it felt like it was slowing me down. I think the suit may not be particularly compatible with me butterflying. It feels fine in freestyle, fly I’m not a fan so far. Anyways… I digress… I had a bunch of friends watching and cheering for me and that was pretty awesome. I got some video of this one too. Now that the SCY season is over I’m going to use this to start picking apart my stroke and figuring out what I can change to make me faster.
Tomorrow I’m not swimming anything but I decided to stay in Clovis until Monday when I do the 1 mile open water swim. I should be at the pool hanging out and swimming in the warm up pool for a while tomorrow.
Patrick and Me
Me and Ahelee
Joel and Me, apparently something happened over there —>
Me and Heidi
The CSAM Crew – Me, Nancy, Julie, Erin, & Peter in the back
Me and Rowdy Gaines
Rowdy signing Peter, why not?
Fat guy in a little suit
In the heighth of swim meet fashion
Pondering my impending 100 fly
…I almost forgot! I shaved my arms in the name of science Friday night. It felt super fast/weird in the warm up pool, but I didn’t feel a difference in my races since my mind was in other places. Growing all that hair back should be exciting… let the awkward itchiness begin.
FloSwimming has been taking video of pretty much everything at USMS Nationals in Clovis this weekend. Go to their Nationals Page and scroll down the left side of the site and see if you can find video of your races. They also have some interviews with some of the swimmers out at the pool. I embedded both of my races from Friday and an interview with Ahelee who has been busy winning everything and setting multiple national records along the way.
Today was my first day of swimming at the 2009 USMS SCY Nationals Championships. What a fantastically huge meet! Swimmers everywhere! Overall I had a good day and it was a lot of fun. I’ve been working on meeting some people in person that I haven’t met in yet today. I got to meet Henry from Texas, Erik from Swimmers Year 2009, the spectacularly mustachioed Jim Clemmons, and John who reads the blog introduced himself to me while I was on my way to swim the 50 fly. If you’re a reader and you see me say hi! I really like getting to meet all you people! I also got to hang out with my long distance teammates from Conejo Simi Masters, Ahelee (who destroyed the 400 IM National Record today!!!), Joel from the 17th man blog, Patrick from Rosebowl, and a bunch of my other SoCal swimmer friends. I think this meet would be fun even if I weren’t swimming just for the all the people.
This morning me and Heidi had intentions of getting to the pool in time for warm up in the competition pool. A weird traffic snafu made me just late enough to miss it. Since I had a while before my first event I went shopping instead :) Even though I shouldn’t have, I accidentally purchased myself a B70… oops. I won’t get into the suit here. I’ve only done one race in it and I can’t pass much judgment just yet, but I have mixed emotions about it. I wore it in the 50 fly but switched back to my Tracer Light for the 200 breaststroke. Tomorrow I’ll wear the B70 for the 50 free and decide after that if I want to wear it for the 100 fly.
My first event of the day was the 50 fly. This is one of my events that I really wanted to swim fast in. I was in like heat 35, but they chewed through heats really fast in the 50 since they were running 2 courses just like Pacific Masters Championships. I feel like I got a solid start and some decent dolphin kicking, I do feel like I surfaced earlier than usual because the suit made me float differently. My turn on this race was pretty ugly. It was like coming up on a yellow light when you’re driving too fast. Glide or stroke? I took an awkward half stroke that I kinda wish I wouldn’t of. I felt fine on the way back but I still think I could have gone faster. All told I swam a 26.79 which is a best time by about .15 seconds. I’m happy with the time but a little disappointed with the swim.
My other event today was the 200 breaststroke. Like I’ve said before it isn’t my forte, but why not give it a shot. I swam a 1:14 for the first hundred which is 1 second slower than my best 100 time… turns out I took it out a little too fast. I died the second hundred. I finished with a 2:43.31 which was good enough for 8th place which sounds really good until you put it in the context of there were only 10 guys swimming and 2 DQed. Don’t tell anybody though, let me pretend I’m awesome for a while. I had turn timing issues on this one too. I don’t know what it is about me and this pool. Hopefully I get it ironed out tomorrow, I want a big swim for that 100 fly!
The facility at Clovis North is outstanding and the weather is super hot. Bright, bright sunshine all day. The officials, timers, and meet staff are all doing a great job. As an added bonus Rowdy Gaines was there today and he started helping at the announcer’s booth around lunch time. It was really cool, he spiced up the 200 breast and really got the crowd going. Tonight I’m looking to make my way out to dinner with Coach Nancy, Ahelee, and some of the CSAM kids. Tomorrow back to the pool! See you all there.
me and Henry from MOST
warm up pool
competition pool
doing the speedsuit dance… yes that is a B70 ;)
random action
the coaches section, I see Ande and Ahelee in there
All the distance folks are out there today swimming the 1650 and the 1000 freestyle. Good luck to Joel, Henry, and everybody else out at the pool today! Me, I’m stuck in my chair at the office. I should be escaping shortly for Clovis.
FloSwimming is out there taking some video and doing some interviews, you can check out their 2009 Masters Nationals page here.
Below I embedded a video interview they did with SPMA swimmer Rita Simonton. Rita is in the 90-94 age groups and holds piles of records in this and other age groups. I’m always impressed with Rita when I get to see her swim at local meets. I hope to get to be her age… and actually be able to swim!
If you’re not into twitter, feel free to ignore me on this one…
Here’s what I’m thinking, all the tech conventions and things like that get a Twitter search hashtag, why not USMS Nationals? I’m going to tag my tweets from nationals with #USMS.
I’m swimming 4 individual events this weekend. 2 I really want to do good in, and 2 that are mainly for my amusement. I really want to post some strong times in the 50 and 100 fly before we all make the switch to the metric system for the rest of the year. My 50 free is a fun “benchmark” event for me. And well… the 200 breast is just the wrong event at the right time. There was a hole in my schedule for Friday and that’s what went in it.
50 Fly Goal Time: 26.3 Currently my best time is a 26.89, I want to drop a half second. During the season I started at 27.7 and swam anywhere between low 28′s and mid 27′s until the meet in Santa Clarita where I swam 27.10 which was under the national qualifying time for my age group. At the next meet in UCLA I swam 26.89 in my last event of the day, and at PMS Champs I swam 27.10 with a huge mistake on the start. So based on that I think a low 26 is reasonable. What I would really like to see is a 25 of some sort, but I don’t think I’m there just yet.
200 Breaststroke Goal Time 2:30 Hey why not? I swam a 1:13 in the hundred at UCLA after I had already put in a 200IM. This race is going to be all about pull downs & streamlines for me. The major goal is to not overdo it and get DQed.
50 Free Goal Time 24.9 I’ve been spending a lot of time in the mid to high 25′s this season. I think I could break 25 if I swim a perfect race.
100 Fly Goal Time 58.5 This is the one I really care about. This year I hit my first goal of breaking a minute at Santa Clarita. I hit goal number two by doing it again at PMS Champs. Now for goal number 3… beating my 100 freestyle. My best 100 free this year was a 58.8 and my best 100 fly was a 59.1 so I’m getting really close. My pipe dream goal is slightly more ambitious, 57 seconds!
If you want to keep up to date with the 2009 USMS SCY Nationals results as they happen, you can follow realtime results here!
First off, why would I even ask that question? Let’s be honest… I have a mild desperation to swim really fast this weekend. Like unreasonably fast for a fat guy in a swimsuit, so I’m exploring all my options for going faster. I’m doing a semi-taper and I’m going to wear my TYR Tracer Light (although I have talked myself into and out of buying another speedsuit of some sort), so now I’m down to crazy person stuff like shaving.
My legs will be covered so those are fine. Plus I wear shorts to work and I don’t want to have to explain why all of a sudden I have shiny, silky, smooth legs. My head is shaved all the time anyways so that is covered. The goatee is staying, sorry, it balances out the feng shui of my noggin. So that basically leaves my arms. My forearms are somewhere between Wolverine and Robin Williams hairy so this would be a substantial undertaking. Is it worth it? I can already feel the growing back itchiness… ugh.
So what say you? Should I shave or should I grow now?
I can’t believe I’m letting the internet help decide whether I shave my arms… feel free to leave discouraging comments below :)
Swine flu, H1N1 virus, hamaggedon, bacon lung… whatever you want to call this hamdemic… it has really captured the over active paranoid imagination of the American public. USMS Executive Director, Rob Butcher, has sent out an e-mail in regards to any possible cancellation of USMS Nationals. Basically the show will go on as planned unless the Feds come in and shut it down which is incredibly unlikely.
Here’s Rob’s letter:
Dear U.S. Masters Swimming membership,
In response to concerns regarding the swine flu, I would like to confirm to you that we are in full operation mode to host the 2009 U.S. Masters Swimming Short Course National Championship next weekend. We are monitoring federal and state authorities guidelines, warnings and protocol. In the event the authorities mandate or strongly recommend the cancellation of outdoor sporting events, we will follow suit and cancel the championship event. If authorities do not mandate the cancellation of outdoor sporting events, we will host the championship event as planned.
Should the event be canceled because of federal or state mandate, we will advise accordingly.
First off, why would I even ask that question? Let’s be honest… I have a mild desperation to swim really fast this weekend. Like unreasonably fast for a fat guy in a swimsuit, so I’m exploring all my options for going faster. I’m doing a semi-taper and I’m going to wear my TYR Tracer Light (although I have talked myself into and out of buying another speedsuit of some sort), so now I’m down to crazy person stuff like shaving. 
Big news kids… the heat sheets for all events under 200 yards have been posted online!
