Tropical Splash Recap
This was just my third meet since everything shut down in February 2020, with my other two meets being short course and long course Nationals last year. I'm very out of practice in racing, normally doing 8-10 meets per year, and could definitely tell at those two meets. Everything from starts, to race strategies, to pacing, to race pace turns, it all felt really rusty at last year's two meets. I'm someone who continually refines my racing at each consecutive meet, even if it's just tiny modifications here and there, so to be running a 15+ meet deficit has really put me behind the 8-ball.
I went into this meet looking at it as a benchmark meet, nothing more. I've been training with the kids pretty heavily this season, averaging 5-7 practices per week barring a ~1 month break when Corwyn was born, and that's the heaviest I've trained since being an age grouper. Given the heavy training load, I really didn't have much in the way of expectations for this meet. I'm a HUGE taper swimmer, so with rest and a shave, I generally have a pretty accurate sense of what I'll do at the end of the season, but this heavy training in-season is new for me. I've done some decently heavy training with the kids in previous seasons, but this year I'm also mixing in training with the senior group vs just the senior prep group, which has taken the intensity and yardage up a few notches from what I'm used to. I'm sure it'll pay off at the end of the season, but as of right now it's a question mark as to what I can do while beaten down in-season...not to mention the whole general rustiness thing.
Tropical Splash Races
200 Breast
This was my first time racing it since 2020, when I did it at a kids meet a few weeks before everything shut down. I went a 2:39, which is an excellent mid-season time! I'd ripped my old in-season tech suit putting it on before this race, so instead of wearing jammers, I just wore one of my practice speedos, which is about as far as you can get from a tech suit. It was a pretty sloppy race; except for the first 50, I struggled to hit the right pacing throughout and in general it was just a forced swim.
My last few mid-season times pre-covid ranged from 2:39-2:42, all with meet suits, so I'm quite happy with how I did in this one even with how sloppy it was. I plan to do it twice more before Nationals (there are three meets between now and Nationals), so hopefully I'll shake the cobwebs out and at least make it a cleaner race by then.
I've been experimenting for the past 4-5 months with a wider kick. I've got something funky going on with my ankles when I swim breaststroke--while out of the water, I've got good lateral ankle flexibility and can turn both feet out to an appropriate angle for a breast kick, but once I get in the water, I have an atrocious angle, so when I keep my knees close-ish together like you're supposed to when swimming breast, I get almost nothing out of my kick. I've been playing around with letting my knees come apart substantially wider as a workaround and it's been paying off in practice. I'll continue to work on it in practice and hopefully nail it down by Nationals, but I think that might have also contributed to the excellent 2:39 here.
100 Free
Well...this was a pretty terrible race. In warmup I'd been having depth perception issues with the wall at the turn end in the deep end (I normally don't lift my head to look at the wall when I do freestyle flipturns, instead using my peripheral vision and the T on the bottom of the pool to gauge where the wall is, but the angle of the pool was wreaking havoc with that judgement and I was all over the place in terms of distance from the wall in warmup) and that continued in this race. I nailed the turn at the 25, but almost completely whiffed at the 75 turn, just barely brushing it with the tips of my toes and losing all momentum. I went in to that turn neck and neck with the guy next to me and came out behind his feet, with him finishing 1.5-2 body lengths ahead of me. I ended up going a :58, which isn't a terrible split for taking a 200 out in for me, but is awful for a 100. I'd been aiming for around a :55, so I was pretty disappointed with this swim.
I think the wall issue is something that'll come back with practice. I've been training in one pool all season and don't have issues there, so I think competing at numerous pools with different walls will help me get back in the practice of sighting the walls properly.
200 Medley Relay
I swam the back leg on the relay and had all of 4 minutes between my 100 free and this race (there was one heat of the 100 free after mine, then we were up for the relay), with no time for cool down in between. I was still winded when I jumped in, but surprisingly pulled out a :31 split. That's definitely slow, as my target time for a good 50 back right now is a :29, but the last time I had such a quick turnaround for a relay, I think at this same meet a few years ago, I was wrecked and went something like a :33.
I think that's a great sign for my general aerobic conditioning this season!
200 Free Relay
There was a 10 minute break between the two relays, so I was finally able to get in a good cooldown and felt pretty good before the race. Unfortunately, I blew the turn again. It wasn't quite as bad of a turn as in the 100 free, this time I was able to at least touch with the balls of my feet, but I still lost almost all my momentum on the turn. I think my split was a :26 high, which is about 1.5 seconds slower than I was aiming for. Oh well, live and learn!
200 Free
I went a 2:05, which is right around my time from Nationals last year and my second fastest mid-season time (behind a 2:03 from a kids meet in December 2019, the rest of my mid-season 200s have been 2:06 or slower), but my race strategy was pretty cruddy. I have no idea what my splits were, but I definitely took it out too slow in the first 100. I'm so used to crashing and burning in the 200 free that I think I held back too much and had too much left in the tank at the end. On the plus side, I lifted my head to look at the turn wall each time and nailed all my turns, so there's that. Also on the plus side, I wasn't wrecked after this race, another great sign for my aerobic conditioning!
100 IM
This race was frustrating. I wasn't dead or even really all that tired going into it, but I just couldn't find any speed on any of the strokes. I was ridiculously long on the back-breast crossover turn and probably lost about :1 there, but I went a 1:05. I'd gone a 1:07 in practice a few weeks ago and have also hit 1:08 a few times from a push within the past few months, not to mention I went a 1:03 from the blocks at a Saturday practice last January, so I don't know why this was so slow. It felt fine throughout, I just couldn't find that top gear needed for a sprint.
Overall Thoughts on the Meet
All in all, this was a pretty good meet.
Sure, the blown turns in the free relay and the 100 free were really annoying, and the 100 IM was puzzlingly slow, but for a training meet, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out! The 200 breast and 200 free were very solid times for mid-season meets when I'm not rusty, let alone after a such a long hiatus from regular racing, and that was without a tech suit. There's quite a difference in racing with a tech suit vs a practice speedo--the tech suit changes your body alignment by lifting your hips and legs, there's compression on your quads and hamstrings that makes a substantial difference on your legs, and tech suits are at least moderately hydrophobic; all of those factors add up to a significant difference between racing in the two suits. I've had some back to back races in the past where I've raced in practice on a Saturday in a practice suit then raced the same race in a tech suit at a Sunday meet and for a 100 it's easily been a :2 difference or even more.
Even better than all that was that I raced 700 yards across 6 events over the span of about 3 hours and wasn't dead by the end. Historically I've been wrecked by the end of these meets, even with a lighter event load (for example, usually I only do 400-600 yards at this meet). This time around, I wasn't even all that tired and probably had enough for another 100-200 race or two in me! That's an excellent sign for my aerobic conditioning.
Thoughts on the Rest of the Season
I've got 3 meets to go before Nationals in San Antonio at the end of the season, all three of which are thankfully before the Nationals entry deadline, so that gives me a decent amount of time to work through some stuff. I've got 3 priorities at these meets:
- Relearn how to race and shake off the cobwebs. There are two components to this:
- Get back in the swing of doing racing starts and turns. Thankfully, this part will just come from repetition and won't really require re-teaching myself anything.
- Pacing and race strategies. This is a bit more complicated, since it's mostly trial and error. For example, I usually swim my Nationals focus events (e.g. the 200 back in years past) anywhere from 4-7 times in-season to iron out all the quirks so I can nail it at Nationals. I won't have that many opportunities this go around, but I'll do what I can.
- Nail down my Nationals lineup. I can swim up to 6 events, but there are more than 6 that are conceptually valid options this season: 50/100 fly, 50/100/200 breast, 100/200 free, and 100/200 IM. The backstroke events are wildcards--I'm only training them in the context of doing backstroke in IM sets in practice, so while I plan to do the 100 back at one of these upcoming meets, unless it goes unexpectedly well, I don't plan to swim any backstroke races at Nationals. 200 breast and 200 free are the only ones I'm doing for sure at Nationals, so I need to run through as many of the rest as I can over these next few meets to see which are the strongest 4 of the rest. I also wouldn't mind doing the 500 at one of these meets if I can realistically fit it in, but that's a secondary priority by far.
- Get used to racing in a tech suit again. Every tech suit is different (e.g. a Speedo LZR Elite is quite different from a TYR Venzo, which is quite different from a Arena Carbon Flex, and so on), and while my in-season tech suit will be different from my Nationals tech suit, the general effect of racing with a tech suit will be similar enough that it'll get me back in the swing of racing with one. There's a huge difference between racing with one and without one in my experience, so that's something I want to get used to again pre-Nationals.
