So, there's only one meet left for me to get any qualification times for Nationals. There's a short course meters meet in Bethesda, MD on March 17th.
To clarify--I can swim three individual events at Nats without making a single cut (I can swim as many relays as I want). To swim more than three, though, I need to get some cuts. So cuts or no cuts, I'll swim at least the 50 fly, 100 fly, and 100 IM at Nats.
From my last meet, I'm within definite reach of the 100 fly cut for sure, should be able to get the 50 fly cut, and probably won't make the 100 IM cut at the next meet.
100 fly: I went a 1:07.75 at the meet yesterday, and the cut is a 59.09. I crashed and burned at the 75 yesterday--I'd swum the 200 fly the day before, and my back muscles locked up pretty badly as a result. Before the muscle issue, I was on track to a 57 or 58. My splits were a 27.84 and 33.91. Should have been around a 30.5 or so on the second 50, which would have put me under the cut with room to spare. Since I've got two weeks to train for this event before the next meet...and am not planning on swimming the 200 fly the day before, I should be set on the 17th.
50 fly: I just haven't had good luck with this event the past few meets. One thing or another has consistently gone wrong, whether it be my goggles flipping over/filling up and blinding me, or a terrible turn, or a horrible start, etc. The cut is a 26.78, and my best so far is a 27.29. If I finally have a problem free swim on the 17th, I should be able to make that relatively easily.
100 IM: Like with the 50 fly, it's the little things that keep messing me up. The cut is a 1:00.77, and my best is a 1:03.70. My first 50 is always much better than my second 50--for example, yesterday I took it out in a 28.77 and brought it back in a 35.16. My breaststroke is pretty shoddy, and my freestyle is never very good after the other three strokes--it's been like that as long as I've swum IMs, as far as I can remember. I think if I really tried, I might be able to shave off about a second on the back half, and maybe drop the front half down to around a 28.0. Maybe. My IM is just not progressing as well as I'd like it to. Admittedly, that's due in a relatively large part to me having focused more on fly in practice than on IM.
Butterfly is clearly (to me, at least) my best shot. My stroke is feeling great, and when I don't have revenge-of-the-200-fly-itis, the whole shebang runs quite smoothly and feels *relatively* fast. Over the next two weeks till the last qualification meet, I'm going to focus a LOT on fly in practice. I'm thinking that anytime we're doing sets that aren't on a fast freestyle pace and are manageable distances, I'm going to do fly instead of free or back. Most of the fly I've done in practice up to this point has consisted of 25s and 50s, with some 75s thrown in here and there, and a 100 or two thrown in once in a blue moon. Oh, I might do a lot of 25s/50s/75s in a practice, but I rarely do longer yardage in one go. Gonna up that distance and also get some speed work in on my own.
Time to pump it up!
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