And when I say I swam on Saturday and Sunday, I don't mean I swam a couple of events each day, I mean I swam a LOT!
On Saturday, in order, I swam the 100 free, 400 free relay, 200 medley relay (back), 200 IM, 100 back, 50 fly, 800 free relay, and 200 free relay.
On Sunday, in order, I swam the 200 free, 400 medley relay (fly), 100 breast, 50 free, 100 fly, 400 free relay, and 200 medley relay (breast).
Here's the synopsis of my swims:
Saturday
100 free: I'll just start off by saying that I don't do freestyle. Sure, I swim it in practice, but I don't train for it in any distance, sprint or long distance. When I swim it in practice, I swim it just to get it over with and move on to the next thing.
This was the first time I'd swum the 100 free since last summer/early fall. I was pumped up and ready to go, and was doing fine till the 50 turn. I hit the wall too high and shoved the pad up, which made me go straight down off the wall. Lost a lot of ground and speed there, and it was pretty dang demoralizing, too! I was even with the front of the pack going into the turn and came out towards the back of the pack, and I couldn't pick up that ground in the second half of the swim. Not exactly how I wanted my first event of the meet to go!
Overall, I never felt great, even before The Turn. While I felt *fine*, I felt stuck in a lower gear and couldn't get up and moving like I should in a 100. And after The Turn, it went downhill from there.
I ended up with splits of 26.78 and 29.95 for a 56.73. Just terrible!
400 free relay: I was still pretty bummed about my 100 free. I had a good relay start, but that was about it. None of my turns were on the mark, and I couldn't get my turnover up. Felt like I was stuck in a middle gear the entire time, and my second 50 just dragged. I had splits of 26.76 and 30.22 for a 56.98. Not a good swim.
200 medley relay (back): This was a better race, despite being right after the 400 free relay! I had a pretty terrible start (horrible reaction time and my right hand got caught on the pad) and a long turn, but I actually felt fast in the water! My time itself was just decent, 29.45, but that's in the ballpark with where I've been all season (besides the previous weekend's 28.98). I'll take it, especially since I hadn't already swum two events before I swam my 50 back at any of the other meets this season!
200 IM: I was already starting to feel sluggish at this point. I made the mistake of not eating any food until I got to the meet, and my energy reserves weren't there--having already swum three events that morning just compounded the issue.
I had a fairly good first half, leading the heat/holding pace with the fastest guy. The burn in my shoulders kicked in with a vengeance a bit before the 125 mark, and the last 50 was terrible. I had splits of 29.28, 34.66, 42.06, and 34.25 for a time of 2:20.25. While that's my fastest time this season by about 2 seconds, it's still about .75 off my best from last year, set at Zones (when I believe that was my first event of the day, sans beard). Comparing the performances, my fly was about 1.5 seconds faster last year, but the rest of my splits this year were a few tenths faster than last time. I REALLY need to figure out how to swim the back half of an IM again! To compare, I found my splits from the last time I swam the 200 in high school: 27.64, 32.10, 39.11, and 31.02 for a 2:09.87. I don't remember if that was my fastest 200 IM ever, but the difference between then and now is pretty striking. I can get my fly down there (last year I was only .2 off my 18 year old pace), but my back is 2 seconds off and my breast/free are both 3 seconds off. Not good!
100 back: This was the event I most wanted to do well in at Zones, and I merely did decent in it. Unfortunately, after the four events I'd already swum that morning, I was only running at what felt like about 75% energy. Technically, I had a good race, besides popping the pad again like I did in the 100 free, although thankfully not as badly this time around. However, I lost circulation in my legs at around the 75 mark and just was running low on energy. I had splits of 30.03 and 32.60 for a 1:02.63. That's .3 off my best time, but again, with everything I had already done that day, not to mention the suit problem, I'll take it!
50 fly: This was an unmitigated disaster! I was beat by this point in the day. The 100 back is the most leg draining event I swim (it's worse than the 200 back, in my opinion, because the tempo is substantially faster for me), and I was seriously hurting in my legs and everywhere else. I had a sloppy start, then couldn't move my arms at all. Well, I could move them, just not with any semblance of speed. On the plus side, I didn't feel nearly as flat in the water as the last few times I've swum fly, and didn't have any excessive problems with my arms dragging through the water.
Umm, that's about all the positive stuff I can say about this race. I had a long turn and an abominable finish. I blanked out going into the finish and totally lost my sense of where I was in the pool. Lifted my head to take a breath so I could see where the wall was...and found out I was about a foot away from it. I flailed my arms forward in an attempt to keep from faceplanting in the wall, and I'm honestly surprised that the resulting arm movement was even remotely legal for butterfly. I went a 27.44, which is a full second off the last time I swam it and 1.5 seconds off my Nationals time from last year. Yep, it was a disaster.
800 free relay: ...Speaking of disasters...this was a hilariously awful race for me! It was right after the 50 fly (like maybe 10 minutes), and I was a completely drained mess at this point of the day. I anchored the relay, and swam against some quite fast guys--our head coach had entered us as a 7:39 (why, I have no idea, since only 2 of us on the relay could reasonably have been expected to go sub 2:00) and we were in a heat with a bunch of relays that actually went that time. I crashed and burned, and the result most likely would have had me in stitches on the floor if I'd been watching it unstead of swimming it. I took it out in a mid 28, which wasn't bad, but then I D.I.E.D. As in splits of 32, 35, and 35 for the remaining 50s, for a 2:11 overall.
200 free relay: Seriously, at this time of the day, what was the point? I had no legs, no arms, no shoulders, no back, and no energy. I split a 25.61...which honestly wasn't as terrible as I expected. Still, my relay split at the Tropical Splash in January was a 25.0, and my time from Nats last year was a 24.9.
Sunday
200 free: I was rather sore and tired from Saturday. I swam about a 1200 in warmup, but still felt sluggish and not up to speed. Behind the blocks, I felt like I was only running at about 80% energy. Diving in, I felt fine for the first 50, started to peter out a bit at the 75, and by the 100 I was done. I just felt bad in the water and didn't have any oomph. My legs just wern't there, and I was having a hell of a time getting air (not a problem in the middle of the pool, but going into the turns, that's why I was double and triple breathing...which totally kills my turnover, I know). I went a 2:07.75, with splits of 28.54, 32.06, 33.57, and 33.58. That's particularly bad, given that I've been able to hold 32 repeats from a push in practice...
400 medley relay (fly): I actually felt much better going into this event than going into the 200 free. For whatever reason, I felt more relaxed and had more energy. Given everything else I had to swim on Sunday, I didn't try hard on the swim, keeping it long and relaxed. I had a phenomenal start (almost thought I false started, since I could see the starts judge start writing when I was in midair and thought he was writing about me, but we didn't get DQed) and kept it very relaxed and smooth for the whole 100. Splits of 29.47 and 35.08 for a 1:04.55. Don't think I put out more than 85% effort. I felt good! I had no problems with my kick or dragging my arms or any issues with body movement. That was the best I've felt swimming fly in several months, including practice. Given my effort level, I was right where I wanted to be time-wise.
100 breast: This was by far my standout race of the meet. I don't train for breaststroke at all--the only time I swim it is when I'm doing an IM set in practice, and then I only swim it to get through with it, not to focus on it and work on technique/speed/power. This was the most throwaway of all my non-core events at the meet, and the one I cared the least about. Behind the blocks, I didn't care what I went, just wanted to relax, swim it, and not kill myself. I had a good start and felt very good in the water for the first 75. I felt clean and smooth, and kept it at about 85-90% effort. My technique started to fall apart a bit on the last 25, but that's to be expected, since I don't even remember the last time I swam more than a 75 breast in practice. I had splits of 33.71 and 38.03 for a 1:11.74. That's a full 2.5 seconds faster than when I swam it in February!
I noticed one big thing both during the race and watching the video afterwards: I've got a hell of a lot better pullout than the people I swim against. They can generally trounce me on the surface, but underwater...whoever I'm racing is usually my bitch! :-D
50 free: This wasn't a terrible swim, but my left shoulder started locking up when I was warming up for this race. Any time I was at full extension with my left arm, the shoulder would freeze and I'd have to exert a lot of pressure for it to unlock. It stayed that way through the race, too. And, by this point in the day, I was running low on energy--the accumulation of the day before and what I'd already swum on Sunday was wearing me down, so I felt like I was running at about 75% energy. With a long turn and that shoulder issue, I went a 25.44. That's my fastest outside of Nationals last year, but I think it probably would have been around a 25 flat sans 15 bazillion previous events/long turn/shoulder thingy.
100 fly: Oh man, this was terrible. I was pretty exhausted by this point in the day and got a massive left hip cramp when I bent down for the start, so my dive was pretty much a one-legged dive, and my turns were all pretty awkward/painful. I tried to dial it up and swim this hard...and it completely fell apart. My back/shoulders locked up and I died big time on the second 50. My splits were 29.67 and 35.04, for a 1:04.71. That's .16 seconds slower than my much easier paced 100 fly on the relay earlier that day. It was horrible!
400 free relay: This was only about 5 minutes after my 100 fly, and I felt awful. I didn't have time to warmdown, so I was still *enjoying* all the lactic acid that had built up in the fly and was scraping rock bottom for my energy level. My left hip was still cramping, too. I couldn't generate any turnover and had no legs. I went splits of 27.35 and 31.32 for a 58.67. Not a good swim at all! At least I was under 1:00, haha!
200 medley relay (breast): Finally, my last event of the meet! I was totally dead at this point. I had a good start and good pullout, but then my left hip cramped on every kick. I tried to substantially up the tempo over what I did in the 100, but it didn't work out too well for me. My breast technique falls apart and feels really sloppy when I try to drive my arms/legs faster than normal. It felt like a very sloppy swim--I didn't get much glide one each stroke, and it all felt disjointed. I went a 33.36, which wasn't terrible. However, it was only .35 faster than the first 50 of my 100, when I didn't have the benefit of a relay start and kept it much calmer and more relaxed. On top of that, it was actually .02 slower than when I swam the individual 50 at the beginning of March. Not my best performance, but still proportionally much faster than my free on the 400 free relay!
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Overall thoughts
This was an exhausting meet, the most exhausting meet I've swum since I did the Iron Man meet in highschool (400 IM, all the 200s in order, and then the 500, all in the same session). I don't put enough yards in in the pool anymore to be able to keep up this level of racing and not die horribly. All that said, I had a total blast! I've outlined my specific focus areas from the meet below:
Fly: I've got two weeks to figure out how to sprint fly again. I did just fine when I kept the 100 fly on the medley relay nice and long, but had horrible 50/100 individual swims. I need to figure out how to move from 3rd to 5th gear without completely falling apart. That said, my stroke has felt better than it has in quite a while--my arms aren't dragging too much in the water and I have good body motion. On top of that, it felt like I finally had a kick again, something that has been missing all season in fly.
Back: No real concerns here--everything felt in order, although my kick started to die off at the end of the 100. Given the suit/loss of circulation issue, I don't know if that's something directly attributable to my backstroke or if that will be resolved with the new suit.
Breast: This was my biggest surprise. Dropping my 100 down to a time I haven't gone in 9 years, especially with me not having trained for it at all, was an eye opener. On top of that, I am only a bit over a second off Katie's 100 breast time now, and she's the fastest regularly competing breaststroker on the team. Over the summer and fall, I think I'll actually train for breast, not just improving my technique like I played around with with Katie last summer. On the other hand, my breast in the IM is pretty shitty. I need to figure out how to maintain my form/speed from the individual event into the IM. This will no doubt be a long work in progress over the next 6+ months. If I can get my IM breast up to speed, that will provide a significant boost to my 100/200/400 IMs!
Free: Wow, I don't know what happened last weekend. That was the worst my free has been all season. One way or another, I need to relearn how to sprint...and how to hold pace for longer than a 50...and how to not completely fall apart in an IM. Lots of work to do on this!
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Issues for Nationals
Nationals starts for me in two weeks, on 5/10. I've got the 50/100/200 back, 50/100 fly, and 100 IM on tap, along with at least one each of the 200 free/medley relays (we've got 4 guys and 2 girls, so we'll be swimming both a men and mixed of both relays, I just don't know who's going to be on the mixed relays). Over the next 10 days of training (I fly to Indy on 5/8), here's what I'm going to focus on:
Fly: I'm not really focusing on speedwork too much this next week, but will focus on that during Monday-Wednesday of Nats week. Next week I'm just focusing on putting in fly yards. My fly meltdowns were atrocious last weekend, so I'm going to try to put enough fly yards on my body that I won't meltdown during either event at Nats. On the Monday-Wednesday of Nats week, I'll focus on getting that tempo up without destroying my rhythm.
Back: I'm focusing almost entirely on my kick, and spending a little bit of time focusing on staying underwater as long as I can without losing speed. Staying underwater won't be an issue for the 50, but will be an issue at the 75 in the 100, and for about the last 125 of the 200.
Breast: I'm working solely on keeping my tempo up going from back-breast in the 100 IM. There is a marked tempo drop from back-breast now, even accounting for the inherently slower tempo of the breaststroke stroke, so I'm focusing on keeping that tempo up. Come Monday-Wednesday of Nats week, I'm going to work on experimenting with keeping a longer glide/more relaxed stroke vs a short/high turnover stroke for the 200 medley relay, since I'm swimming breast. At this point, I don't know which one is faster for me, but I do know that right now the short stroke feels awfully sloppy.
Free: I'm working at being able to swim at speed. That's it!
Turns: I'm going to work on a faster flip speed. Watching my videos, except for a couple races in particular, my flip speed isn't terrible. That said, it can always be faster, so I'm going to work on throwing my legs over faster on back and free. As far as open turns go, I'm going to focus on snapping my legs forward under me faster. And I'm going to keep working on the back-breast crossover turn. The last three times I've swum an IM in a meet, I've had the stroke timing down perfectly, so I've been able to do the turn without having to make it choppy or glide in a really long way. I'm going to work on finetuning the timing/positioning so that if I hit it right on the 100 IM, I'll have a faster flip on it than I do now.
Kick: I'm going to do some long kick sets on my own, focusing on a mix of high speed and high intensity (fairly high speed, extended distances compared to sprint kick) sets. Mostly free/back, with some fly thrown in there. I'm also going to throw in some vertical kick sessions, something I haven't done at all in the last 3 months or so. That should help my fly kick, for sure.
