My 100 IM
First up was my 100 IM. I had a great start and took the fly out quite well. Wasn't full out sprinting on the fly, but I took it out at a nice clip. After watching many videos of Olympians and studs at the NCAA championships swimming fly and back, I've decided to model my underwater work off theirs and stay underwater as long as I can. You can see its results in the IM. Good fly, long turn, though. The pool has three Ts going into the bulkhead for the turn, which screwed me up, as you can see. Good backstroke leg (relatively speaking--my backstroke is still way slower than it used to be, but for where it is now, quite a good leg). My breaststroke is also rather slow in general, but relatively speaking it was another good leg. I brought the free home fast for me, so overall it was a good swim. I dropped about a second in it and went a 1:02.74. I'll take it!
I haven't spent much time at all training for IMs in practice, so I'm quite happy of my performance in this one. With two weeks to work on my IM, plus the whole taper and shave thing, I'm aiming for around a 1:00 in it at Nationals.
My 50 back
My next event was the 50 back. I had a rather terrible start on it--ideally I have a nice high arch pushing off the wall (see my 50 back on the relay yesterday for an example), but I wasn't set well on the wall, so I pushed off very flat. Good underwater work off both walls, though. My arm spin speed was better than the 50 yesterday, but my backstroke as a whole isn't anywhere near where it should be. I dropped another .2 seconds from my time yesterday, so over the two days of the meet I've dropped my 50 back time from a 29.89 to a 29.22. Eh, lots of work to do on back, but I'll take it!
My 100 fly
My last event today was the 100 fly. This was a very frustrating race in retrospect. Every time I've swum it up till now, I've taken it out too fast and died on the second half (among other issues). This time around, I was aiming to take it out a bit easier and save enough juice for the second half. Yesterday in my 200 IM, I took it out in a 27.89 and felt pretty relaxed doing so. With my 50 fly time being a 26.44, I was aiming for about the same pace I did yesterday in the 200 IM for the first half of the 100 fly. I had a great start and the first 50 of the 100 felt nice and relaxed....a bit too relaxed. I tried to pick up the pace on the second 50, but it was too late. Normally my back is on fire by the end of the 3rd 25, but it didn't start tightening up till halfway back on the last 25. By the way, the last time I swam the 100 fly two weeks ago, I kept choking on water. In the video, take a look at my third breath on the last 25--I choked on the second breath, so I raised my head higher out of the water on the third breath to get air--you can see how it affects my stroke. Anyways, I dropped about half a second in this event and went a 1:01.27. I took it out in a 28.98 and brought it back in a 32.29. Not nearly fast enough. The past two times I've swum it, I've taken it out in a 27.84 and a 28.03. The 27.84 is what I should've been today. On the plus side, I've brought it back in a 33.91 and 34.01 respectively, so my 32.29 today wasn't too terrible in comparison.
On a side note, I wore my Fastskin jammers for this race. I'll be wearing them for Nationals, so I decided to break them out today and see how they felt. For the most part, they felt fantastic both in and out of the water, but the bottom of the leg is very tight on my thighs just above the knee. Almost too tight, but I can live with it. I could feel quite a bit of difference overall between it and the Aquablade jammers that I normally wear, and besides the knee issue, I much prefer the Fastskin.
****
Overall, this was a fantastic meet! I dropped time in everything I swam, and had a blast with my teammates. And with me finally being able to see videos of my races, I can pinpoint exactly what I need to work on over the next two weeks till Nationals. Gonna be a fun and productive two weeks!
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