First local meet of the season!

(Oops, I meant to post this last month, but inadvertently just saved it as a draft instead.)

I signed up for the first local meet of the season this past weekend at the beginning of December on a whim.

I've been pretty much out of the water for the past 9 weeks getting a new tattoo that took 5 sessions, so while I'd been able to get in once or twice every two weeks, I wasn't remotely close to legitimately training. Usually by this point of the season I'd be in pretty heavy training, but I'm effectively starting my season 2.5 months later than normal. I hadn't initially planned on swimming this meet, since I literally finished up with all the tattoo stuff the week of the meet and only got two full practices under my belt last week prior to the meet, but figured I'd go ahead and enter it just to see where I'm at.

Anyways, I signed up for a total of 5 events--100 IM, 50 fly, 200 free relay, 50 back, and 200 medley relay. I'd initially planned to wear a meet suit, but as a game time decision, decided to just race wearing my denim print speedo instead. :-D

100 IM

Honestly, this was a better race than I expected! I went a 1:04.97, which, funnily enough, is half a second faster than when I swam it while suited at my first meet last season. I'd been in heavy training at the time, but was in much better swimming shape than I am right now.

Anyways, this wasn't a terrible race. I didn't have a top gear for any of the strokes, but I felt pretty technically proficient throughout, which is a plus. Fly felt great, back felt great though I was about half a stroke too long on the back-breast crossover turn, breast felt ok, and free felt good despite slightly misjudging the breakout stroke and breaking the surface about a half stroke too early. I didn't have the speed I'd have liked, but the strokes themselves felt pretty good overall.

For being out of shape and wearing just a practice suit, 1:04.97 was a good time! If I were suited and had nailed my back-breast turn, I'd have likely been closer to a 1:03, but I'd just wanted to be sub-1:06, so I'll take it! I still have 5 100 IM times on the books that are slower than this one, so not a bad way to go.

50 fly

This one was SLOW. I went a 29.09 and had zero speed. I felt technically proficient and didn't die, I just had no speed. Besides, you know, swimming faster, the only thing I'd have changed would've been taking a second breath on the way back. I had intended to do one down, two back, but ended up doing one down, one back and that likely slowed me down a bit going into the finish.

29.09 isn't my slowest time on record, thankfully, though it is my second slowest. I'd like to think that with a suit and a second breath on the way back, I could've been in the low/mid 28 range, but oh well.

200 free relay

This was about 20 minutes after my 50 fly. Similar to the 50 fly, it was slow in general, but thankfully wasn't as comparably slow as the fly. I led off our relay with 26.61, which is just my 3rd slowest swim.

I don't think there was anything I can point at to say it slowed me down--I hit my race strategy pretty much right on the money, I just didn't have any top end speed. Sure, I might've been closer to a 26 flat suited, but I don't think a suit would've made too much of a difference here.

50 back

Well, this was an interesting race. Apparently, with the shape I'm in and with not wearing a meet suit, my stroke count for the turn and finish is a full stroke off. I had to substantially stretch out both my turn and my finish because I initiated them both about a full stroke further out than I'd anticipated. As a result, I went a 31.50. I've got 4 swims under my belt that are slower than that, so it wasn't as much of a debacle as it could've been.

This pool has the high pad on the start end, so you have to use the bars to do a backstroke start, there's no way to do a gutter start. I, uh, am not great with bar starts... At least I didn't do a back flop like I did multiple times in warmup, but yeah, I did not have a great start. That was easily probably half a second there from the botched entry to the non-ideal depth of the entry.

200 medley relay

I led it off, too, and swam it much better than my individual 50 back! Still a mediocre start, but I nailed the depth for the kicks underwater, nailed the stroke count on the turn, and was a bit closer on the finish, though still longer than I'd have liked, than I was on the individual 50. I went a 31.03, which was much closer to what I'd been hoping to go at this meet. Suited and with a gutter start, I'd like to think this would've been closer to a 30.5, but I'll definitely take it in comparison to the individual 50!

Overall thoughts

Ya know, while quite a slow meet overall, I'm pretty happy with it! I knew going into the meet that my times would be slow, I just wanted to see *how* slow they'd be. The 50 fly was the only one that I was disappointed in given that expectation, as a 29 is substantially slower than I expected given how that race felt in the water.

One big plus is that my dives surprisingly felt great! My backstroke starts were rubbish, of course, but my dives all felt much better than I expected. I didn't quite have the explosiveness that I'll look for by the end of the season, but I had good reaction times, good jumps, and clean entries.

Now that I'm back in the water full time, I'm ready for my next meet (likely in February) and looking forward to getting back in the swing of things. Starting swimming in earnest again during the painful months of December and January isn't exactly ideal...but I have no one to blame but myself for scheduling the tattoo work at this time of the year.

Onward and upward!