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
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.
