**Results are currently available here!

getting ready for my 50 fly

Today started with a wake up waaaay to early for me… 4:45… in the morning! Ack! It was for a good reason though, I had to be in Santa Maria at my pool workout buddy Mike’s house early to catch a ride down to Pasadena for the Cal Tech Pentathlon. Admittedly I’m not in pool sprinter shape at the moment, but this is my third year in a row going to this meet and it’s hard to miss… it’s just fun! A 50 of each stroke and a 100 IM, great way to take a reading on how your strokes are doing across the board.

Mike and I left Santa Maria around 6 and jammed down the 101 towards SoCal with no traffic anywhere. Thanks to everyone still being asleep we managed to beat mapquest’s directions by 30 minutes, score! Even though we were half an hour early for warm up there were a few folks on the deck moving about… including a few of my favorites, Pat and Kathleen from Rosebowl. They let us set our stuff up by their tent so we’d have some shade for the day.

warm up in full swing

Since the competition pool gets pretty crazy during warm up I made sure to get in right away when it opened so I could take my time and feel out the edges. I’ve had issues finding the walls here before so I figured this was good plan. I got in about 200 yards with a lane all to myself and then things started filling in. After 300 or 400 yards I hopped out with plans to get back wet again in the warm up pool when it got closer to my first event. In the mean time I found the contingent of swimmers from my team that were there for the day and tracked down a bunch of friends I haven’t seen in months!

The first event of the day was my best event on the schedule, the 50 fly. Even with my sandbagged time I landed in the 2nd to last heat of the event. A couple heats earlier my buddy Mike swam a 27 something so I figured I had to catch that because if I was going to beat him in anything this was my big chance. I felt like I got a really solid start and my dolphin kicking was good. I was alright through the turn, but on the second half I didn’t really feel like my stroke was connecting as well as it could have. I ended up taking one more stroke than I probably should have at the finish, but at least I landed in the 27′s. Later on I figured out that Mike and I tied with exactly a 27.40, crazy… so close to beating him just once…

back half of my 50 fly

Next up was the 50 back, I suck at the 50 back. My underwater kicking off each wall was fine, but the swimming part in the middle… not so much. I swam a 34.2 which is a lot slower than the last 2 years, and didn’t even catch my sandbagged time… that needs some work.

My 50 breast was kind of fun because I had my friend Clive on one side of me and my friend Patrick on the other. Patrick’s wife videoed the race and you can see how it all went below…

In the 50 free Mike and I made up the same exact time and ended up in the same heat directly next to each other. I left my camera with my teammate Becky to grab some video for me. I think I had a pretty strong start, but I made a big mistake on the breakout. I pulled my arm out way to deep and slowed myself down a lot getting to the surface. We turned even with each other, and I knew that would set Mike’s competitive nature in motion. From there he turned the legs on and pulled away from me beating me by a stroke.

We finished the day with the 100 IM… the good news is I finished right around my sandbagged time, that’s also the bad news! I added 6 seconds onto my best time and apparently I needed all of them! I knew I was in trouble when I wasn’t out front during the 25 fly… it was all downhill from there. At the finish I was huffing and puffing pretty hard. Funny thing is I feel better after a 3 mile ocean swim than I do after a fast 100. My friend Pat was in my heat so I have some video for this as well, I kind of fall out of frame through part of it by virtue of not being fast enough to stay in it :)

Once the meet was done I got dressed and said my goodbyes to everybody before Mike and I got back on the road. We stopped for lunch before leaving Pasadena and I inhaled mine! A steak, mashed potatoes, a couple glasses of water and a beer… recovery meal of champions right? By 7pm, 13 1/2 hours after leaving the house, I was home. It was a long day but a good trip. I’m not sure what my next meet will be, but I’m sure I’ll be back in the race pool shortly!

**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 :)