2019 USMS Spring Nationals--New best meet of my career?

Ok, I'm trying to decide whether this was the best meet of my career or if last year's Nats was the best of my career. Last year I had 3 lifetime PRs, 1 Masters PR, and 4 Masters 2nd best times. This meet resulted in 1 LPR, 2 MPRs, 2 Masters 2nd best times, and 1 Masters 3rd best time.

Meh, I think it's tied with last year for best meet ever, all things considered!

I swam a total of 6 races over 3 days of competition:

Friday: 200 breast, 100 free, 200 fly
Saturday: 200 back, 200 IM
Sunday: 200 free

Friday was rough! It was between 95-100 degrees most of the day, and I spent most of the 9 hours we were at the pool outside, though thankfully in the shade. That heat seriously saps your energy even if you stay well hydrated, which bit me in the butt by the time I got to the 200 fly. Saturday and Sunday I spent most of the day in the air conditioned gym, and my energy level was correspondingly much better.

Friday events

200 Breast

I went a 2:30.75, a new PR by .25 (last year's 2:31.00 was my previous LPR). From a technique standpoint, I'm pretty satisfied with how it turned out, but the heat didn't have me at full energy. I'd been hoping to go sub-2:30, so while I *did* go a LPR, it wasn't quite as fast as I was hoping.

100 Free

That's me at the bottom of the screen...can't see much of the race, but you do get to see my AMAZING first turn! :-D

I went a 54.80, .15 off my MPR of 54.65 from 2017, so while the time is great I think it would have been well under that 54.65 if I'd had a clean race. Off the start, my goggle strap slipped down to the top of my ears and both lenses filled with water. While I've got my stroke count nailed down for most of my freestyle pacing, I had no idea what my stroke count would be for the first lap. Unable to see, I took a breath when I thought I had at least 3 strokes left to take before needing to flip, and saw the wall right *there* as I was rotating to breathe. I did a really sloppy, jammed, turn from that breath stroke, but then was able to do the rest of the race based off my stroke count. Managed to nail the stroke counts! Couldn't see anything clearly, but nailed all the turns.

200 Fly

Ok, by this point, I'd been outside for 8.5+ hours and the heat was really enervating. I was feeling substantially more tired pre-race than just being on my third event of the day would account for. I nailed my pacing for the first 100 and felt calm and in control...then just flat out ran out of steam. Normally, when I swim the 200 fly, I almost invariably take it out too fast and start to lock up around the 150 mark, then run out of energy. Not this time! Completely ran out of gas on the 125 lap, but physically felt fine besides that. Didn't start to tighten up until around the 165 mark, and still managed to pull out a last 50 split that's not far off my best masters last 50 split, and a full 1.5 seconds faster than the debacle of a last 50 I did at Greensboro in 2016, which was a race where I definitely took it out too fast and paid the price for it in return.

On the plus side, there were two good things that came out of this race--dropping my underwater kicks from 6 to 5 for the 200 worked quite well, energy draining heat aside, and I seem to have figured out how to have an upkick again when I swim fly! Looking at videos of my 200 fly from the past few years, my feet haven't broken the surface on my upkick, and often you can't even see any splash back there. Feet and splash were visible the whole race this time!

It was my 2nd fastest Masters performance (2:23.33) and just .6 off my MPR, with splits of 30.63, 35.60, 37.60, and 39.50.

Saturday events

200 Back

Ugh. As far as I'm concerned, there was only one good thing about this race--I stayed nice and straight in the lane, no ping ponging from one side to the other.

Everything just felt off. I had zero feel for the water and actually felt like there was a bubble surrounding me. Even from the start, I couldn't get my underwater kick count right during the whole race, and correspondingly my stroke count was never settled. Adding on to the crap sandwich that was this "race," my tempo never once got to where I wanted it to be.

All that aside, it was my 3rd fastest Masters time (2:17.75) with splits of 31.47, 34.61, 35.96, and 35.71. Not a *terrible* race, per se, just bad in terms of what it could have been. I'd gone into this race hoping for a 2:15 or faster and thought I had a legit shot at it...

200 IM

Not a clean race, but a new MPR by about .4!

Off the start my goggle strap slid over my left ear, leading to the eye piece being half over my left eye after the first turn (you can see it over my ear for most of the race in the video). Since I sight the lane rope out of my left eye on backstroke, and correspondingly couldn't see out of my left eye, I swerved towards the lane rope a bit on the 2nd 25 of backstroke. I also messed up my underwater kick count off the backstroke turn...that is, I had a brain fart and lost count of how many kicks I'd done...so I was one stroke too far out to do the back-breast crossover turn...grr!

Breast was inexplicably slow, 1.3 seconds slower than my breast split on my former MPR race from 2017. I would've expected the free leg to also be slow, but it was right at my 2017 split. Don't know what was going on with breast, since it didn't feel like it was a bad swim--I know the open turn vs the crossover turn was probably .3-.5 of that, but I don't know about the rest.

Splits of 28.05, 34.57, 40.03, and 32.22 for a MPR of 2:14.87, down from 2017's 29.34, 35.01, 38.75, and 32.17 for a 2:15.27. Again, beside that errant breaststroke split, I'm quite happy with how that turned out!

Side note, I don't think you can hear them in the video, but the timers in my line were hilarious! In the butterfly races, they'd be screaming at the swimmers in their lane, stuff like "spread your wings, you're a majestic butterfly!"

Sunday

200 Free

Last event of the meet and I was hurting going into it! After warmup that morning, my lower back and my hamstrings had been killing me, so I had a 20 minute massage focusing on just those two areas. Lower back felt fine for this race but my hamstrings were only marginally better.

They completely gave out coming off the 100 turn and I couldn't feel if I was kicking at all for the rest of the race. Turns out, looking at the video, that I actually kept a decent kick going the whole time, which is news to me! :-)

I was gassed on this race and you can tell everything hit me around that 100 mark--tempo goes down, kick decreased, I started breathing more, and even double breathed into a few turns, which is something I've actually almost entirely eliminated from practice, let alone racing! :-/

Still, I toughed it out and blasted my old MPR in the process, going a 2:01.72, a new MPR by 2.8 seconds! Splits were 27.44, 30.35, 31.87, and 32.06. You can definitely tell that I was carrying a piano with me on the second 100, but I'm still quite happy with the time! I'd come into this meet hoping for a 2:02.82 or faster, so goal definitively achieved.

Overall thoughts

This meet definitely had its ups and downs, but overall it was an outstanding success. Even my "bad" race, the 200 back, was still my 3rd fastest Masters time...

The heat was a real factor and something I hadn't really taken into account before the meet--I'd like to think I'd have been better in all three events on Friday (especially the 200 fly!) if I'd stayed indoors like I did Saturday and Sunday.

As a result of this meet, I'm actually throwing out my original training plan for the 2019-2020 season. The original plan had me training for and racing the 1000, 500, 400 IM, 200 free, and 200 IM at Nationals next year in San Antonio. I want a redo in some of my races from this meet, though, so I'm planning to train for and race the 200 fly, 200 IM, 200 free, 200 breast, 100 IM, and either the 100 fly or 100 breast. I'll do another blog post in a week or two on my training plan for next season, but as of now that's what I plan to do.

Nationals in a few days...all about pacing and them splits

All right, in two days I'll be on the plane to Arizona for USMS Spring Nationals!

One of the key themes this season in the NCAP senior prep practices that I go to has been pacing, primarily 200 pacing with some 500 pacing thrown in there. The idea is that you figure out what that pacing feels like in practice, so you can then turn around and swim that pace in a meet, rather than just showing up to race and having no idea what pace you’ll go.

Sure, you can have two swimmers who go a 2:00 in the 200 free, for example, but they might split their races very differently. In practice, Swimmer A would figure out how they’d need to pace their race and what their splits should be for each 50. Ditto for Swimmer B. Let’s say Swimmer A splits his 2:00 200 free as 28.0, 29.5, 31.0, 31.5. In practice, se should know what that 28.0 feels like, what the 29.5 feels like, and so on. And not only know what it feels like, but be able to consistently swim that time in practice when he’s supposed to be swimming that pace. Before his race at a meet, he knows exactly how he’s going to swim the race; during the race, he knows approximately how it’s going as he’s swimming it, since he knows what his desired splits feel like.

That’s the whole idea behind the pace work we’ve been doing all season and it’s a concept I wholeheartedly support both as a swimmer and as a coach!

Like I mentioned earlier, we’ve been working on pacing a lot in practice, and I’m mostly pretty happy with how I’ve done with 200 pacing for the various strokes. Here’s how I’m hoping to split my races by 50, in order, at Nationals barring any injuries or meltdowns. These are all ballpark target times, so if I've got a 37.5 listed, for example, but actually go a 37.1 or a 37.9, I won't mind. If I go a 38.5, on the other hand...

200 Breast

33.0, 37.5, 38.5, 40.5 for a target time of 2:29.5. As points of reference, here are my two most recent fast 200 breast splits:

• 2018 Spring Nationals: 32.7, 37.4, 39.5, 41.3 for a 2:31.0
• March 2019 meet: 33.5, 37.9, 40.3, 41.4 for a 2:33.3 

I’ve been working on my middle 100 pacing for this and last Thursday I did two of ‘em (I did 2 x (1 x 100 at pace and a 50 easy, together on 3:00) and was 1:19 on the first one and 1:18 on the second one. Given that I’m aiming for a 1:16 on the middle 100, a 1:18 in practice is right there, given that I’ll be shaved, suited, and amped up during the race itself compared to practice.

I also think I’ll be able to swim it smarter than I have in the past—I get my speed in breaststroke from the underwater pullout, but up until the past few weeks, I consistently stayed underwater too long in the 200, which brought up lots of oxygen deprivation issues on the back half of the race. I’ve been working the past few weeks on shortening my pullout a bit for the 200, which has paid off in not dying as bad in practice.

100 Free

25.8, 28.5 for a target time of 54.3. As a point of comparison, the last time I did this shaved and tapered was back in 2017, I split 26.0 and 28.6 for a 54.6. As another point of comparison, my real* lifetime PR is a 54.4 from when I was an age grouper. My official lifetime PR is a 52.8 as an age grouper, but I’m pretty sure that was a timing glitch since I never broke 54.4 before or after that errant 52.8.

I haven’t been doing any real 100 free training this season, I only entered this event because Nathan Adrian had said he was going to swim at USMS Nationals prior to his cancer diagnosis and I wanted to “race” him. I also haven’t been doing any 100 pace training during my taper and don’t plan to over these last few days before I swim it on Friday, so who knows how I’ll actually split it! 😊

200 Fly

30.7, 36.0, 36.5, 36.5 for a 2:19.7. As a point of comparison, my Masters PR, and the last time I actually raced the 200 fly, was from 2017 (noticeably, not a shaved and tapered meet with splits of 31.4, 36.0, 37.4, 37.7 for a 2:22.6.

I’ve actually been having issues in practice during my taper so far with going too fast on my fly pace work. Last Thursday I did 3 pace 50s fly and then the same 100 pace/50 easy set I did for breast. I was :35, :34, :35 for the 50s, then 1:13 on both 100s. I would love to be able to hold those paces at the meet, but since I haven’t really done any 200 fly training until the last month or so, I don’t know if I have the aerobic base to do that without having one of my more epic meltdowns on the last 50. I did two more pace 50s on Saturday at the end of practice and way waaaay too fast on the first one with a :32, but managed to slow it down to a :35 on the second one. Frankly, it feels like I'm holding way too far back to go a :35, so I really don't know what to really expect at the meet.

200 Back

31.2, 34.2, 34.5, 34.5 for a 2:14.6. As a point of comparison, my 200 back from Nationals last year had splits of 31.4, 34.6, 35.0, 35.4 for a 2:16.6.

My backstroke is a big question mark right now. The stroke feels pretty good in the water, but my times aren’t there. I’ve been holding anywhere from :34-:36 on pace 50s during my taper, and my pace 100s have been from 1:09-1:12. Unlike with any of my other strokes, I haven’t been able to nail down a consistent pace. I’m hoping it’ll iron itself out over the last few practices of my taper, but so far, meh.

200 IM

29.0, 34.2, 38.7, 32.1 for a 1:14.0. As a point of reference, my last shaved and tapered 200 IM was in 2017 with splits of 29.3, 35.0, 38.7, 32.1 for a 2:15.2.

I haven’t done any 200 IM pacing per se during my taper, but we did some great 200 IM sets a couple months ago. My big problem has historically been primarily that I go too slow on the backstroke leg. The 200 IM set we did a few times was a number of 150 IMs, dropping the fly, with the goal of swimming around the same time as the equivalent 150 split in your meet 200 IM. For me, my best meet split is a 1:46 for the back-breast-free portion. During the set, I was holding 1:43s and 1:44s, so I *should* be able to actually swim faster than my target splits listed above if I can get it through my head to hammer the backstroke leg instead of hold back a bit like I habitually do.

200 Free

27.5, 30.0, 31.0, 31.5 for a 2:00.0. As a point of comparison, my last shaved and tapered 200 free was in 2017 and I had splits of 28.5, 31.0, 32.0, 32.8 for a 2:04.5.

Ok, this one is pretty ambitious, especially for being the last of 6 events at the meet, but *should* be theoretically feasible. My problem in the past with this race has been holding back too much on the front half. I did the same set of 50s and 100s in practice on Thursday and was holding :30s and :31s on the 50s, and a 1:02 and 1:03 on the 100s.

Even more ambitious, looking up my results from back in the day, my lifetime PR is a 2:00.3. I know I generally swim much smarter these days than I did as an age grouper, but I’ll be pretty amused if I set a lifetime PR in freestyle, of all strokes, in my 30s! :-D

2019 Zones recap--last meet before Nationals!

I swam at the local Masters championship meet this past weekend, the 2019 Colonies Zone SCY Championship at George Mason University.

Since I've been doing my focus events (all the 200s) at meets throughout the season, I only signed up to race non-focus events at this meet to change it up and help me not set unrealistic standards a few weeks out from Nats. I've done that before, when I used to swim the same lineup at Zones that I was going to do at Nationals a few weeks later, and had some performances that got in my head when I didn't swim as well as I wanted, so by not doing *any* of the same events at both meets, I nicely side stepped that issue entirely!

I'll get into the event recaps next, but first I want to go over the major fiasco of the meet, the tech suit situation.

For some context, every year before Nationals (except for this one), I've ordered a bunch of different tech suits, tried 'em all on, then kept the one that fit the best to wear for Nats and returned the rest. Last year, out of the 8 I tried on, I really liked how two of them fit, so I kept both, wore one for Nats, and decided to save the other one to wear for Zones this year and next year. In case anyone is interested, the two suits I kept last year were the A3 Performance VICI and the Finis Rival. I wore the VICI at Nats last year and it was my in-season suit this year, and I broke out the Rival for this meet.

For the first time in 8+ years, I've been consistently lifting in the weight room for the past 5 months or so, and as a result, I've put on a noticeable amount of muscle mass in my legs. That came back to bit me in the heinie, more on that below...

I also didn't taper at all besides dropping a 50 here and there my last practice before the meet, and still kept with heavy workouts in the weight room on Monday and Wednesday. I've been swimming pretty tired and heavy in the water lately, which is right where I want to be before starting my 1.5 week taper for Nats, but I wasn't sure how that'd affect me for the meet.

Friday

1000 Free

I swam the 1000 on Friday. I'd swam it for the first time as a Masters swimmer in 2017, when Zones was my shave/taper meet. I'd gone a 12:10 then and wanted to be around that time now. In warmup, I'd noticed that the Rival was pretty tight on my legs, especially the bottom 4" or so above my knees, but didn't think much of it because I don't drive a hard kick during the 1000. The race started off pretty well, but I felt pretty low in the water. Bizzarely, around the halfway point of the race, my eyes went out of focus, with one eye feeling like it was focusing on an entirely different focal point than the other. It was super disconcerting and quickly became nausea inducing with both eyes open, so for the rest of the race I alternated between half a lap with only one eye open, then half a lap with the other eye open. At that point, I decided to not worry about my time, and only worry about finishing the race without hurling. I managed to finish without puking, but was seriously dizzy with a pretty pounding headache by the end of the race and didn't swim fast at all.

I ended up going a 12:26, 16 seconds slower than in 2017. All that said, it could have been much worse. From a purely physical standpoint, I still felt pretty fresh at the end of the swim. Well, relatively speaking--I was still feeling tired and heavy in general, but compared to how I felt before starting the 1000, I felt pretty fresh.

It ended up taking another 8-10 minutes for my eyes to go back to being in focus after I finished the 1000. I was still alternating which eye was open during my cooldown, then they just switched back to normal, and the headache faded away after another 30 minutes or so. This is the first time this has ever happened to me, so I don't know if it's something I should be worried about in the future, or if it was just some fluke. It didn't happen again the rest of the meet.

Saturday

I started to think something might be amiss with the Rival suit during warmup. My thighs felt quite fatigued and they didn't get any better over the course of my ~35 minute warmup, which usually isn't an issue. I also noticed while doing some fast kicking during the warmup that the band at the bottom of the leg right above the knee was almost painfully tight, and the few inches above that were also abnormally tight.

Mixed 400 Free Relay

I anchored our mixed 400 free relay and it was rough. First 50 felt pretty good, though my legs felt really fatigued, and everything just hurt on the 2nd 50, along with me feeling more like I was finishing a 200 than finishing a 100, and felt like a lead balloon, to boot. My time was actually quite good, though, with a 55.22 split. As a point of reference, last year at Zones I was a 56.64 on the same relay, and looking back over the past few years, I'm usually between a high 55 and high 56 in this relay. Getting out of the pool after the relay, my legs really freaking hurt, though.

Mixed 200 Medley Relay

This was about 5 minutes after the 400 free relay, with one heat of the 200 medley between the two relays. I led off with backstroke and not only had a bad start and way too long turn, but I was gassed--I went a 30.69 and really had nothing in the tank that soon after the 400 free relay. On top of that, my legs were excruciating coming off the turn and I don't know if I had any legs at all on the second lap. Looks like I was even slower last year, though, with a 31.39, but was much faster in 2017, with a 28.83.

50 Fly

I'd warmed down for a solid 500 after the two relays but my legs were still painful. Getting up on the blocks for this race was a slow and painful process. I went a 27.67, which is a bit better than the 27.79 I went at this meet last year, but a far cry from the mid 26 I regularly went when I actually trained for sprint fly several years ago. After both my quads cramped up while climbing out of the pool, I decided I had to ditch the suit.

500 Free

I scratched this race. I was scheduled to swim about 45 minutes after the 50 fly, but even after taking the suit off and using the roller on my legs for a solid 10 minutes, I was still cramping and didn't want to potentially make things worse if there was actually something wrong with my legs beyond the suit issues.

50 Back

By this point, I'd been out of the Rival for about an hour and a half and had swum around a 450 in the warmup pool in a borrowed speedo and my drag suit. Still felt tired and heavy in the water, but my legs weren't nearly as painful as they'd been earlier.

I had a much better start than I did on the relay and ended up with a 30.06. I'd been a 29.64 at Zones last year, but that was with me wearing an actual tech suit, so I figure a .4 deficit with a drag suit on isn't too shabby!

Going off on a bit of a tangent here...notwithstanding the too-tight issue, there's a definite difference between wearing a tech suit and a brief (or drag suit in my case). With a properly fitted tech suit, the jammer's compression locks your muscles into place, provides a bit of buoyancy, and helps lift your legs into a more optimal position, along with varying degrees of water impermeability from one tech suit to the next. With a brief/drag suit, you have none of that and it's a very clear difference going from one to the other. Throw in the amount of extra drag a drag suit provides and it's a night and day difference between the two types of suits.

Men's 200 Free Relay

I anchored our men's 200 free relay at the end of the day. I pulled a 25.23 out of my kiester, which I was quite happy with, all things considered. Even being fatigued and rocking a drag suit, that's faster than I usually am at Zones with a relay start--I'm normally in the mid-upper 25 range. I'd gone into the meet hoping to break 25, but I will definitely settle for this time with everything going on!

Sunday

I had a lighter lineup on paper than what I actually swam on Saturday, but it ended up being pretty much just as rough. During warmup I felt really, really tired and heavy in the water, but my legs felt no more fatigued than they should've been after two days of swimming, so at least the cramping/pain issues were resolved! I stayed with the drag suit for all my races on Sunday. I figured that since I was training through Zones, I'd *really* train through it and deprive myself of the benefits of a tech suit.

50 breast

Ugh, this was a sloppy race. I really can't figure out sprint breaststroke. Increasing my tempo to anything faster than my 100 pace makes it feel like everything is falling apart--my kick feels like both my feet and knees are getting all wonky, I feel like I'm losing water on my catch, and my body perpetually feels out of place since I'm not getting a good glide between strokes. On top of all that, my left hand was out of place on the turn and it slipped down the wall, making my turn off balance and jerky. I went a 32.52 which isn't a great time, especially compared to the 31.49 I went last month, but could've been worse. All things considered, I wasn't happy with the time, but also wasn't disappointed with it, just meh.

400 IM

Hey, I won my age group in this! :-D
As far as time is concerned, this was pretty bad. I went a 5:14, which is 14 seconds off my Masters best. With how everything was going, I decided I just wanted to make it through the event while hopefully not completely dying. First 50 of fly felt good, though I felt really, really low in the water, and my back locked up on the 4th lap of the fly, with that last lap feeling like the closing lap of some of my more painful 200 flys in memory; in addition, both goggles had almost completely filled up during the fly. That pretty much set the tone for the rest of the swim. I couldn't really see anything on the backstroke leg except during the flip, when the water would move away from my eyes, so I did that 100 based solely on stroke count. Surprisingly, I nailed 3 of the backstroke walls going off stroke count with only the 150 turn being long! My legs were pretty long gone by the time I got through the breast and started on the free portion, and my back muscles had long since atrophied and turned into fossils, too, but I made it through the free with less pain than I've had other times I've swam the 400.
Also surprisingly, with the exception of the 2nd 50 fly, my splits were surprisingly consistent. Slooow but consistent. 32-39 for fly, 41-40 back, 43-43 breast, and 37-36 free. You can call me Eeyore!

Bonus points if you can figure out if the video is of my race or that chick's butt... 😂

Men's 400 Free Relay

I led off this relay, but was dragging by this point. First 50 felt great, my legs very quickly died after the 50 turn, and the rest of my body shut down after the 75 turn. I was a BLAZING 58.01...which is surprisingly only the 2nd slowest relay 100 free I can find, after an absolute stinker of a 1:03.4 I did at Zones in 2015. Fun fact, the dude leading off the relay in the lane to my right is Katie Ledecky's older brother. I can say I got to race Ledecky! :-D

Men's 200 Medley Relay

This was another 5 minute double, like the two relays Saturday morning. I did the breast leg this time and actually pulled out a 34.01, which really surprised me. Still dirt slow, but with a relay start that was pretty much me just exhaustedly falling off the block and little energy on the swim (side note--my tired tempo on this race felt much better than my too-quick tempo from the individual 50 breast, and I nailed the turn, to boot), I'm pretty happy with it. Back in 2013, which is the last time I can find me doing the 50 breast on a relay at Zones, I was a suited 33.36. It's not really an apples to apples comparison, though, since my breaststroke all around was markedly worse in 2013 than it is now (my best times then vs now for the 50, 100, and 200: 33.34-31.49, 1:11.74-1:07.99, and 2:47.61-2:31.00).

Overall thoughts

With everything taken into account, I'm pretty happy with how this meet turned out. Dizziness and suit induced leg issues aside, my times were surprisingly solid for racing in a drag suit. I touched on it earlier, but there is a HUGE difference in my opinion between swimming in a properly fitted tech suit and a drag suit. Even taking that into account, my times were surprisingly good (for me, anyways).

This week will be my last of heavy training before starting my taper for Nats--5 practices and 1 lifting workouts with medium weights (I'm stepping the weights down this week, up till now I've alternated between 2 and 3 lifting sessions per week and they've all been heavy), then I start tapering in the pool and I'm out of the weight room till after Nats.

I'm usually a big shave and taper swimmer, but this is the first time as a Masters swimmer that I've been lifting heading into the end of the season, so I'm hoping two weeks is enough for my body, especially my legs, to recover from lifting and put me in my normal tapered state ready for traveling to Arizona on April 24th for Nats!

Heading into 2019 Nationals on the right foot!

I've got the 2019 USMS Spring National Championship coming up in just over a month (April 25th-28th) in Mesa, AZ. After a long season of training and competing, I'm down to one final meet before Nats, the local Masters Zone championship April 5th-7th.

I think I'm in the best shape I've been as a Masters swimmer right now! All season, I've been swimming with the senior prep group of the age group team I coach. I've been averaging 4-6 practices a week, usually most of 'em with the kids and one a week with my Masters team every now and then. It's definitely paying off--my aerobic base in practice is better than it's been in recent memory and I've been able to hold intervals I haven't hit since being a teenager. That's translated to meets this season, too, in that even when I've swum a race with a poor strategy and paid for it at the finish, I haven't been absolutely wrecked like has been all too common in the past few years (I'm looking at you, 200 fly and 200 breast).

So far this season, I've swum in 10 meets--5 age group and 5 Masters, with 2 Masters meets to go. Couldn't tell you the last time, if ever, that I swam 12 meets in a season! I came into the season with the goal to swim every event from the 1000 on down at least once. Through Zones in a couple weeks, I'll have doubled that and swum some of those events 3-4 times, to boot!

I'm a firm believer of the idea that the way to race better is to race more. I've had some absolutely atrocious races at various meets this season, but each one has been a learning moment and I'm happy to say that for the most part, I haven't repeated the errors that made the bad races so bad. Uh, I was informed in November that my approach to the wall in backstroke is too slow, thought I fixed it in practice, then was told by the same coach that, nope, my approach was still slow in February...but I fixed the other issues!

From a preparation standpoint, swimming at the age group meets has been fantastic. I generally swam on both Saturday and Sunday of those meets, and that's where I regularly had some of my worst races from a time standpoint. I discovered that being at the pool racing and coaching for 12 hours on Saturday completely wrecks me for doing that all over again on Sunday, but it's phenomenal preparation for being mentally ready to race through fatigue and pain. There were a couple times this season where I swam a particular event at an age group meet one weekend and put up an ok to middling time in the midst of being on deck for 20+ hours, then swam that same race the next weekend fresh at a Masters meet and dropped a substantial amount of time even if the race itself was sloppy or otherwise unoptimal.

****

All that background out of the way, I've got my heaviest event lineup yet in place for Nats. I'm doing all five 200s (200 fly, 200 back, 200 breast, 200 free, and 200 IM) and have the 100 free as my optional 6th event. I've swum all of 'em except the 200 back at least twice this season and am quite happy with where I'm at right now. I'm a big taper swimmer, so me being at in-season PRs in most of those events right now is hopefully a great sign of things to come!

Here's the list of where I'm currently at for each of those events, along with how they compare in the grand scheme of things and what my Nationals targets are for 'em.

Event	Best in-season time this season	Best in-season time last 3 seasons	Best tapered time last 3 seasons	Masters PR	Goal time at 2019 Nats
200 fly	2:30.42	2:22.68	2:23.94	2:22.68	2:22.50
200 back	2:26.20*	2:18.18	2:16.60	2:12.90	2:14.50
200 breast	2:33.34	2:38.60	2:31.00	2:31.00	2:29.50
200 free	2:06.03	2:07.17	2:04.36	2:04.36	2:02.50
200 IM	2:19.54	2:19.94	2:15.27	2:15.27	2:14.50
100 free	56.62	57.10	54.65	54.65	54.50

Here's my breakdown event by event, in the order I'll swim them at Nationals.

Friday, April 26th

200 breast

I think the key for me to break 2:30 in this race is to be strategic. I know my underwaters are by far my strongest suit in breaststroke, but every time I hammer the underwaters in the 200, I pay the price on the back half. After the first 50, I want to shorten the underwaters a bit and try to not get into oxygen deprivation. I've been training in practice this season to hit 7 strokes per lap, but for the next month I'm going to aim for 8 strokes with a shortened pullout.

Two other things that will help me hit my goal:

• Better outsweep on my kick: Due to somewhat limited lateral mobility in my knees and especially in my ankles (I'm definitely not a natural breaststroker), I've naturally got a narrow kick that doesn't give much propulsion. I've been working on it for the past month or so and think I can continue to improve it through Nationals. I've gone to two private lessons for my kick and have another lesson coming up this weekend working on it, so hopefully it'll pay off! Side note--the lessons have identified *what* I need to do to fix the kick, it's a matter of actually doing it while I swim, since it feels really weird and is something that goes against what I assume is 20+ years of bad habits as a competitive swimmer.
• Attacking it on the 2nd 50: In the past I've tended to ride the pullout too long on the 2nd 50 and have given up valuable speed. Gonna try tightening that up and get that 2nd 50 split down. I think if I can do that and keep myself out of the ox dep zone, I should hopefully keep the last 50 under :40.

100 free

Frankly, I don't train speed work for anything, especially not for free. This is going to be a crapshoot, but if I hit my turns, I should be able to go a Masters PR. 

200 fly

I haven't trained for the 200 fly for several seasons now, but since my aerobic base is much better than it was when I last trained for that race in the 2015-2016 season, I think I've got a real shot at hitting my goal time. I've swum the 200 twice this season, both times in the last month or so, and both times simply cruised through the 200 without a race strategy, just doing it as a morale booster. I have a complicated history with the 200 fly. I love the race in general, but as a Masters swimmer it's almost always had my number and treated me as its red headed stepchild...and I've had a tendency to really melt down on the last 50.

A few key focus areas for me:

• Technique: Up until this past summer, I had a tendency to have my hands enter too narrow, and correspondingly sweep my hands outward before pulling back. That's, uh, pretty inefficient and wastes time, and I've been working on it in practice this season. I still tend to do it in the 50 and sometimes in the 200, but I think I've eradicated that habit in the 200, so I'm hoping I can carry that through this race.
• Underwater kicks and stroke count: Like with breaststroke, I've historically tended to stay underwater too long and it's bit me in the booty with severe oxygen deprivation in the last 50-75 of the race. While I haven't been working on 200 fly training in practice, per se, I have been working on my kick and stroke count. Before, I was focused on 6 kicks and 7 strokes per lap, now I'm working on 5 kicks and 8 strokes per lap. I did that for both of the 200s I've done this season and didn't feel the piano until the last 5-10 yards of both swims, so I'm hoping that will carry through to Nationals when I actually *race* the 200.

Saturday, April 27th

200 back

Ok, I've only done this once so far this season, and just cruised it since I had the 200 fly coming up about 15 minutes later. I went the 2:26 listed in the above table, but I was barely even breathing hard at the end of the race--I've got a number of 2:23s and 2:24 in-season races in the past, and those were all ones where I hammered it to go those times, in comparison to now where I more or less loafed it and still came within a few seconds of those times. I've gone pretty decent in-season times in the 50 and 100, so I'm overall pretty optimistic for this race.

As is a common refrain with the underwater-heavy races, my key focus area is being more strategic with my underwaters in this race. In the past I've gone 14 kicks off the start (that gets me breaking out right at the 15m marker), 10-11 kicks off the first turn, 8-9 off the 2nd turn, 6-7 off the next few turns, then 4-5 kicks off the last turn, and have always run into major oxygen deprivation by the end of the race. The clearest example of that was the race at 2013 Nats where I went my Masters PR--I fully blacked out on the 2nd to last lap--I remember turning at the 150 and then coming out of the turn at the 175, no clue what happened in between those two turns.

I've been working in practice to hit 12 kicks off the start, 8 off the next turn, 7 off the next, then 6 kicks after that. There will inherently be ox dep in the 200 back, but if I can keep out of the worst of that zone, I should be all right.

200 IM

I've been a victim of self inflicted poor race strategy in this race, primarily around swimming too slow on the fly and back legs--I think I've always been subconsciously afraid of taking it out too fast and then having an epic crash and burn on the back half, but I've got the aerobic base now that unless I truly sprinted the fly and back, I'll be able to handle a back half pain train, so this is a mental issue rather than a physical limitation. 

We've done some great 200 IM pacing sets in the age group practices this season, so if I can actually carry those lessons learned through to this race, I should be able to knock it out of the park.

Side note--the 2:19 I did this season in January is .5 faster than my next fastest in-season time as a Masters swimmer (and is my 2nd fastest Masters time, to boot!), and I had the double whammy handicap of swimming the front half too slow and having my back foot slip off the block on the start and effectively just falling into the pool. Subtracting the start handicap, I should've been on track for a 2:17 high or 2:18 low, which would have been a phenomenal in-season time, since my fly split was about 1.25 seconds slower than it should have been and my back split was about .5 seconds slower than it should have been.

Sunday, April 28th

200 free

Almost verbatim, this is the same issue as the 200 IM. I swam it most recently at a Masters meet in January...and took it out noticeably too slow and had far too much left in the tank at the end of the race. If I can get over that subconscious hurdle of holding back on the front half, I should be able to throw down a (for me, anyways) great time.