Tropical Splash, baby!

We had the Tropical Splash meet this past Sunday--that's the meet my team hosts every year.

When I've done this meet the past few years, I've done mostly short events like the 50 back and 100 IM.  This year I decided to go for the longer events--I did the 200 back, 200 fly, and 200 breast, in that order.  I'm going to swim the 100/200 back, 100/200 fly, and 400 IM at Nationals in May, so I figured I should probably start competing in the longer events... :-)

200 back

I felt decent while warming up, but had noted that my legs didn't feel 100%.  I know, I know, walking around all day the day before at the auto show wasn't a great idea, but whatever.  I thought I'd be able to muscle through it without too many problems.

Nope.

I took it out at what I thought was a decent pace (I wanted to take it out faster than last weekend, since I'd been too slow on the front half then), but then crashed and burned at the 125.  My legs completely disappeared, I couldn't breathe at all, and I dropped from doing my normal 6 dolphin kicks off of each wall to 3, and then 2 off the last two turns.  On top of that, my lats were on fire.  The last 50 was my own private hell, and I watched the girl in the lane next to me, who I had at least a 1.5 bodylength lead on at the 100, inexorably eat up the space in between us.  I did end up beating her, but not by more than a second or so. 

My splits: 32:30, 34.80 (1:07.10), 37.05 (1:44.15), 38.41 (2:22.56).  Terrible, simply terrible.  The first 100 wasn't too bad, but I'd have liked to have been under 1:07.  I don't know what happened on the back half.  While my overall time was about a second faster than last weekend, and my first 100 was about 3 seconds faster, this was a horrible race.  I completely fell apart and felt way worse than I did a week before.  I think it was mainly a combination of two factors--being on my feet all day Saturday and allergies (I got really bad allergies on Wednesday and am pretty sure I literally coughed up a lung at Saturday's practice).

On a side note, my splits last year prior to Nationals were usually in the region of 32, 35, 35, 35.  I was right there for the first 100 this time...and then just a wee bit off for the second 100...

200 fly

Man, during the last 75 of that 200 back, I was sure that I'd actually die if I tried to do a 200 fly!  I've done almost zero physical training for the 200 fly.  I'd done maybe a total of 500 yards of fly over the last month or so, but had psyched myself up enough to think I could do it without absolutely killing myself...

And I was right!

Sure, it was slooow, and I went into survival butterfly in the last 50 or so (3-4 kicks per pull), but I made it without stopping and am pretty sure I could have kept going indefinitely.

My splits were 34.73, 41.02 (1:15.75), 44.47 (2:00.22), 46.19 (2:46.41).  Just looking at the spread without paying attention to the actual times, the spread wasn't too bad.  A 5 second difference between the 2nd and 4th 50s is fine by me.  However, the overall speed wasn't there.  That was also fine by me--I knew I would require the services of a lifeguard if I actually tried to race a 200 fly without training for it, so I made my main goal to just finish and swim a legal 200.

Honestly, it hurt far less than my 200 back.  I still had legs, I still had arms, the only part that really hurt was my upper back.  I was about 13.5 seconds off of my time from 2 years ago, when I'd actually spent 3 months preparing for the 200 fly.  I'll take it!  I figure if I spend the next three months training for the 200 fly, I should be in good shape for swimming it at Nats.

200 breast

This is the event I'll do once a year, at the Tropical Splash.  I don't train breast in practice and don't particularly like the stroke to begin with.  That being said, I felt really good for the first 125 of the race.  This wasn't too long after the 200 fly...and it hit me like a dump truck full of bricks at the 125.  I went from feeling efficient and smooth to having no energy or ability to move in a coordinated movement.  I went a 2:48.71, with splits of 37.04, 42.52 (1:19.56), 45.20 (2:04.76), 43.95 (2:48.71).  I was exactly 1.1 seconds off my time from the same meet last year.  There were three big differences between the two races:
1) Last year, I'd actually trained for breaststroke--this year, I'd done even less breast than fly in practice
2) Last year, I'd swum it in order to really race--this year, I just swam it
3) I wasn't coming off the 200 fly last year

All that said, I was quite surprised.  Discounting the 200 fly hitting me at the 125, I felt really, really good in the water.  It almost felt like I could swim breaststroke!  I had enough fun with it to briefly consider swimming it more often, then realized that I'd have to drop a TON of time in order to make the Nats cut in it.  Not gonna happen...