2 flights and a quick drive later I finally got to the pool!

Today was the first SPMA meet of the SCY season and it was hosted in Las Vegas! Not a bad place to start the year! Both of my flights were on time this morning and I actually got to the pool early which turned out to be a really good deal. I ran into Rowdy Gaines as I got into the pool area and got a chance to talk with him for a while. Rowdy is such a nice guy and it’s always cool when I get a chance to talk to him a little bit in person! He’s in town for something with the local age group team… I tried to talk him into deck entering but unfortunately he was a little busy. He did swim a little bit though during warm up, I got to swim beside him for about 1000 yards which was very cool for me!

Once warm up was over I had a good chunk of time to hang out before I actually raced. This meet starts with the 500 free and that tends to take a while to work through. I hung out with the Rose Bowl Masters today since this wasn’t a team meet for CVMM.

I started out with the 50 fly today and my race went pretty well. I swam a 26.8 which is a pretty decent showing for the first meet of the season. I haven’t done much short course speed work recently and I didn’t dolphin kick as far as I usually do so all that being said I think I might be able swim a low 25 this year.

Up next was the 50 breaststroke which is typically a “palate cleanser” for me. I’m not a b-stroker. I had a pretty decent swim, good pull down with a dolphin kick (that’s new for me) and besides an awkward extra stroke at the 25 I had no major mistakes. My timer was having a stopwatch meltdown during my heat so I didn’t get a time at the end of my race. Amazingly when I checked the results on the wall later I found out that I won my age group! I swam a 33.15 which isn’t a best time but really good for me.

In theory my 3rd event was the 100 fly but I missed it. The acoustics in the pool were really bad and I didn’t hear the event announced. All the heat and event announcements were very Charlie Brown’s Teacher-esque. Wahh wah wah wahh wah wah… On the one hand I’m bummed I missed the 100 fly, on the other my body was starting to cramp up.

I finished up with a 50 free and it wasn’t exactly my best work. My calf cramped up on the blocks and I just wasn’t all there for it. I swam a low 26 and I have a little video for you below… as usual I’m the handsome bald man in the bodysuit :)

I got a few pictures throughout the day… here’s some of them!

apparently we had some Elvis’ in attendance

That’s Rowdy Gaines doing a flip turn

… that’s me swimming next to him!

the Desert Breeze Park Pool

I present you snow on a mountain :)

Now I’m at New York New York about to go run all over Vegas and have some fun! I’m flying back tomorrow!

Me with Cullen Jones

This morning I made my way out to a Make-a-Splash event featuring Olympic Gold Medalist Cullen Jones in downtown LA. I was pretty excited to go see Cullen talk, and I’m a fan of the work he’s doing to help kids learn to swim. I was scared to death of water until I was like 11 years old and had a few aquatic close calls growing up. If it weren’t for my mom making sure I took swim lessons every summer I wouldn’t be water safe, and I would have never started swimming competitively. Make-a-Splash is in place to help kids who otherwise wouldn’t have the opportunity to learn how to swim get the opportunity to do so and become safe in the water.

Amazingly I got a seat at the cool kids table. I had Mel Stewart, Chris LaBianco, and Rowdy Gaines to the left of me and John Naber to the right of me. I had a ton of fun joking around with Gold Medal Mel and listening to the speakers they had for us this morning.

We heard from a few different people involved with the Make-a-Splash program and they all did a really good job of driving home the point that a drowning death is a highly preventable death. All it requires is an opportunity for a child to get in a pool with an instructor focused on getting them water safe. To learn more about what Make-a-Splash does you can go to makeasplash.org or if you want to make a donation to support the cause you can do that over here.

After the official portion of the event was over I got to mix around, mingle a little bit, and get some pictures. Random fun fact of the day… upwards of 3 different gold medalists have now taken pictures with my iPhone :) It was very cool to get to talk at length with Mel, Rowdy, Steve from 10kswimmer, and a lot of the people that work with the USA Swimming Foundation and Make-a-Splash.

Cullen talking about the Make-a-Splash program

We Had 6 Olympians in attendance, 5 of them swimmers (Lenny Krayzelburg, John Naber, Cullen Jones, Mel Stewart, and Rowdy Gaines)

Me and Rowdy, photo by Gold Medal Mel

Me and Gold Medal Mel, photo by John Naber

If you’re planning on being in Indy and are unattached or willing to switch teams (it’s like a 60 day process so you need to get cracking right now if you want in), Rowdy Gaines is looking for you. He followed up the tweet above with the following disclaimer: “No need to be fast, just fun…” So here’s your chance to be a part of Team Blu Frog which up until this point consisted of I believe just Rowdy Gaines.

If you’re into Twitter you can follow Rowdy here. If you’re into bald, fat guys that swim and complain about computers you can follow me here.