Had the first swim meet of 2012 yesterday in Annapolis. The Maryland LMSC puts on the Carol Chidester Swim Series, which is a series of one a month meets that the LMSC offers at various pools throughout Maryland. They're free to Maryland swimmers, and cost $15 for all non-MD swimmers. Besides the drive, it's a pretty darn good deal! I'm planning on the one they offer in March at the same pool, and possibly the February meet, once they say where it is.
Anyways, Dan (one of the other serious swimmers) and I were the only two from the team at the meet. He's a flyer and freestyler, while I'm a flyer and backstroker. I won't hold the freestyle against him... :-D
I swam the 50 back, 50 fly, and 100 IM, in that order. I don't remember what my exact times were (I didn't write them down, and they won't release the results till later this week), but I dropped a decent amount of time in each event from what I did at the first meet, back in October. I swam a second meet in December, but it was SCM, so the times aren't a straight comparison. Anyways, I think I dropped about a second and a half in both 50s and a bit over three seconds in the 100 IM.
50 back: By far the best start I've had since I started swimming again. On the finish, I realized that in the process of the start, I'd pulled the touch pad AND the velcro it was attached to off the top of the gutter where it was affixed. Oops. Apparently I had a death grip on it... Anyways, my turn was a shade longer than I'd have liked, but wasn't that bad. Finish was likewise a bit long, but still within the ballpark. I think I did right around a 30 flat, but will find out for sure when they send the results out. Overall, I thought it was pretty good, though my stroke got kinda short during the last 15 yards or so. I focused on the three main critiques from Saturday's video session--lifting my head before the breakout stroke, a stronger kick, and not over rotating my arms towards the 12:00 mark on entry. I think I was successful with the head position and the kick (at least, the kick felt stronger to me), but I'm pretty sure I started to regress towards 12:00 on the hand entry towards the end of the race, just out of muscle memory, since I've been entering my hands there as long as I can remember. Still, pretty good race, and I dropped time, so I don't have anything serious to complain about at this point!
50 fly: Had a great start and mostly good swim. My mind blanked when I got past the flags at the turn, so while the turn itself was fine, my stroke tempo was off going into the turn. Hmph. Had a great tempo on the second 25 and didn't want to ruin it by breathing more than once, so I started to feel the oxygen deprivation going into the finish. The finish, I can only imagine, looked extremely uncoordinated. After my last full stroke into the wall, I was still about a half stroke out, so my brain said to take the half stroke...while my body said to just do a long finish. The result was a bizarre mix of the two, so I kinda flopped into the wall. It felt awkward as hell, so I can only imagine it looked about the same as it felt. Went about a 28.1, which is around a second and a half faster than October, I think. If I'd nailed the turn and had a good finish, most likely would have been under 28, easy.
100 IM: Had a fantastic first 50! Excellent start, great underwater work, strokes felt great, perfect timing on the fly/back turn, and pretty good timing on the back/breast turn. At that point, I think I was at least a body length ahead of the rest of the pool. And then I had a spectacular meltdown. For some reason, I wasn't able to get a single full breath on breast, so I was getting very oxygen starved going into free. Breathing issues continued throughout the free 25, so my muscles all locked up and pretty much shut down. Technique went out the window and I slowed way down. Ended up only touching out the guy in the lane next to me by about a tenth of a second. Still won the heat and placed 7th overall in the event, but the second half of the race was PAINFUL! Dropped about 3.5 seconds from the last time I swam the IM (I went around a 1:07 flat, I think), so that was good, but I imagine that I'd have been a few more seconds faster than that if I'd been able to breathe properly for the second 50. No idea why I crashed and burned so spectacularly on the IM, but it was still a decent swim in the grand scheme of things.
Overall, I was pretty pleased with the meet! It was great having Dan there--he's got a coaching background, I believe, and knows technique like it's second nature, so he was able to give feedback on my swims. I tried to do the same for his swims, but his technique overall is a lot better than mine, so I didn't have much to tell him.
Anyways, at this point, all I'm concerned about is dropping time. Once I'm in the ballpark of the times I've set as my goal times for 2012, then I'll start to work on the specifics at meets. Still got a ways to go till then, so for now it's just dropping time that's important. And from that point of view, this meet was a total success!
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