Frankly, going into this meet, I had just about zero expectations. Barring the ~12 long course practices I swam over the summer, I don't train long course as a general matter of principle. I also rarely race it, with a whopping total of 5 masters LCM meets under my belt prior to this meet, two in 2012, one in 2014, and two in 2015. Compared to SCY meets, where I've normally clocked 8-12 meets per season over the past 11 years, I might as well never race LCM!
All of that is just to say I didn't have any expectations going into the meet, and decided to treat it mostly as just another in-season meet, what with being in the middle of October and in the middle of heavy training. As a result, I didn't shave my body, I didn't taper (heck, I even did a double the day before my travel day, and did a practice the morning of my travel day!), and I wore an old suit. I'm very much a ritualistic shave/taper swimmer and follow the same routine for every masters nationals, but I threw that out for this meet and pretty much treated it just like any random in-season meet, barring shaving my beard.
I swam a handful of events: in order--50 free, 100 free, 50 back, 50 breast, 50 fly, and 200 IM. With the exception of the 200 IM, none of those are focus events for me in SCY, either, so I threw them out there as totally throwaway events. My focus was primarily on getting to see my family, enjoying the break from reality that is a travel meet, and getting a second meet under my belt in the last 20 months.
Friday
This was a super light day, with just the 50 free on the docket.
50 free:
This was the sloppiest of my races by far, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out! I somehow managed to go shallow on my start (seriously, I *never* go shallow on my starts, I have no clue how I managed to pull that off) and only got 3 butterfly kicks in before my breakout, compared to my normal 6-7. I'd planned for it to be a 3 breath 50, then inhaled water on my 2nd breath, which turned it into a 4 breath 50. All in all, it didn't turn out as badly as I feared after the inauspicious start! I went a 29.48, which was a new masters PR by .28. It's a full 1.5 seconds off my lifetime PR as a teenager, but still quite acceptable. My LCM times tend to be 15-20% slower than the equivalent SCY times, and with having gone a 24.95 in SCY in my latest 50 free from back in 2018, that puts me at around a 18% differential, which is right in that range. I'll take it!
Here's the video. My race is at about the 52:15 mark in the video, I'm in lane 1 at the bottom of the screen.
I had a much better start than in the 50, but did have a goggle malfunction. One of the eyepieces filled up when I hit the water and the other slowly filled up over the course of the first lap. I could only vaguely see where the wall was at the turn and flipped just a bit too far away from the wall, so pretty much just my toes made contact with the wall and I got very little push off the turn. Coming into the finish, it was a similar story, I thought the wall was closer than it was and glided a bit at the finish. Still, my splits were solid! 30.70 going out, 33.62 coming back for a 1:04.32! That was 1.78 seconds faster than my 2015 swim and .91 faster than the lone age group swim in the USAS database, so it counts as both a new masters and lifetime PR! I do think I had a 1:03 in me if not for the goggle-induced wall issues, but I have absolutely nothing to complain about with this swim. Even better, I'm now officially less than 20 seconds slower than Caeleb Dressel in the 100! :-D
Having gone a 56.02 at SCY nats in July, my 1:04.32 is just under 15% slower, so well within the SCY-LCM delta. Even going against my SCY masters best of a 54.65, that still comes out to 17% and change, so that's an excellent sign!
Here's the video. My race is at about the 55:15 mark, I'm at lane 7, 3rd from the top of the screen. Side note--while I'd LOVE to claim the :54 as shown on the video, all of the lanes were off by 1 on the graphic.
50 back:
I didn't really have any expectations for this race. I've been doing a lot of free in practice and have noticed dramatic improvements in my freestyle over the past two years in training, but I've spent very little time working on my backstroke over that same period. I haven't worked on backstroke speed, or backstroke endurance, or even just backstroke technique. I just haven't worked on back, period. I still conceptually consider myself at least somewhat a backstroker, but I haven't been putting the work in. All that said, my backstroke hasn't felt bad, per se, I just haven't worked on it.
I'd had a series of utterly abysmal backstroke starts in warmup using the wedge, so I went back to the tried and true gutter start for the race itself, and it went off mostly without a hitch--the start itself was fine, but I came up after 13 butterfly kicks instead of my normal 14, so apparently a touch shallower than normal. The rest of the race seemed like a good, clean race. I've done the LCM 50 back 5 times before as a Masters swimmer, with my latest time being a 34.83 from nationals in 2015. This time, I went a 34.58! The only time I've got recorded that was faster than that (34.40) was from pool that's flagged as unmeasured in the USMS database, so I'm gonna go ahead and asterisk this swim as my new masters and lifetime PR. :-)
My latest SCY 50 back was a 30.06 from 2019, which puts this swim's delta right at 15%. Even from my recent-ish best time from 2018 of a 28.65, that puts the delta at around 20%, which is still in the ballpark.
Here's the video: My race is at about the 39:30 mark, I'm in lane 2, 2nd from the bottom. Again, the graphic is jacked up as far as times go.
Sunday
This was my heavy day, with the 50 breast, 50 fly, and 200 IM.
50 breast:
Ooh boy, me and sprint breaststroke really do not mix, especially me and LCM sprint breaststroke, since the only reason I'm halfway competitive in SCY breast is because I have relatively great underwaters. I'd never done the LCM 50 breast before, either age group or masters, so the only thing I had to go off of was a 1:31 100 breast from back in 2012 at the same unmeasured pool I mentioned earlier. I pulled off a 38.16, which, given the lack of a measuring stick, feels like a pretty good time!
My most recent SCY 50 breast was a 32.52 from 2019, which would put this swim's delta at about 18%. My masters best SCY 50 breast is a 31.49, which would give a delta of about 21%, so I'm pretty happy with how it went. Felt like a clean race throughout, minus a bit of a sloppy breakout stroke.
Here's the race video. My race is at about the 2:27:30 mark in the video, I'm in lane 6 towards the top of the screen. Times on the screen are still jacked up.
50 fly:
We've been doing a lot more fly in practice lately than I'm used to (I swim with the senior group 3 days a week now and they do a lot more fly than I'm used to doing with the senior prep group) and it's been paying off! I'd done the LCM 50 fly four times prior to this swim and the three previous swims were plateaued at a 32.0--32.02, 32.05, and 32.06. I couldn't get my turnover going like it should for a 50, and felt like my arms were pacing for a 100 fly, but I finally broke 32 with a 31.91! It felt like I maintained my tempo and technique well through the 45m mark and only tightened up a bit on the no-breath finish. Given some of the struggles I've had in the past finishing out some of my SCY 50s fly, I'll take it.
My most recent SCY 50 fly was a 27.32 from 2020 right before everything shut down, which puts the delta for this swim at right around 17%, which is good enough for me!
Here's the race video. My race is at about 43:20 in the video, I'm at the bottom of the screen.
200 IM:
When I'm untapered, and especially when I'm in heavy training, I swim tired. This was the first of my races where I swam tired, and I swam tired from the first stroke all the way through the last stroke. For all the 50s, swimming untapered doesn't really impact me too much, and I had enough adrenaline in the 100 free to not be too affected by it, but this race was like swimming with a piano on my back the whole time.
I'd only swum this once before as a Masters swimmer, back in 2012, and went a 2:51.68. That was pretty much my only yardstick, and I beat it with a 2:47.48! It's a far cry off my lifetime/age group best of a 2:35, but for where I'm at in my training cycle and swimming career, I'll take it. I'd like to think I'd have been closer to a 2:42 or so if I was shaved and tapered right now, but I'm happy with just having beat my 2012 time.
I went a 2:22.45 in the SCY 200 IM in July, which would put the delta for this race at around 18%, right in my target zone. My masters best of 2:14.87 from 2019, on the other hand, would put this at about a 24% delta, which sounds about right.
Here's the race video. My race (well, what little you can see of it) is at about the 1:39:15 mark and I'm 2nd from the top of the screen.
Conclusions
I came out of this meet with 4 lifetime bests! Admittedly, three of those four lifetime bests were for stroke 50s that I most likely hadn't done after the age of 12 as an age grouper, but still. Gotta set lifetime bests at some point! :-D
I'm really happy with how I swam overall. I'm a HUGE shave/taper swimmer and only rarely swim the same times or slower shaved/tapered as I do in-season, and that's pretty much only in the 200 fly. Usually I make pretty significant time drops in-season to tapered, like dropping 5 seconds in the 200 IM, or 4 seconds in the 100 breast, or 4.5 seconds in the 200 free, and so on. For me to go quite solid times at this point in my training cycle, that's a fantastic sign. Barring injuries between now and then that might throw me off my training, I'm expecting to throw down some excellent times come short course nationals at San Antonio at the end of April!
For next year's long course nationals in Richmond, I'm planning to redo the 100 free and 200 IM, though the rest of my event lineup is up in the air right now. Again with the caveat that this is predicated on injuries not derailing my training again, I'm guesstimating a 1:02 high in the 100 free and a 2:40 in the 200 IM with a shave and taper for that meet.
