Whew, that was a great and exhausting Nationals! I normally don't post my post-Nats recap this quickly, but I'm sitting in the hotel with literally nothing else to do, so figure I might as well knock it out.
Feel free to skip down to the daily recaps if you want to get into the actual swim stuff.
Pre-meet Thoughts
Going into this meet, I had pretty low expectations. I'm not going to rehash everything in detail that I've posted in previous blog entries, but this was a unique season. I was mentally burned out after spring Nats last year and didn't train seriously at all from May-December 2022, I got my chest tattoo in the fall which physically kept me out of the water except for a handful of practices for 10 weeks, then the family crisis in January that kept me out for a while...the long and short of it is that I didn't start training seriously till towards the end of February, then had another family crisis at the end of March/beginning of April that also impacted my training and emotional/mental state in general.
With about 10 weeks of actual training under my belt going into this meet, I didn't really know what to expect. I'm fairly old school in my personal training philosophy and usually do a solid 8 months of focused, typically (relatively) heavy training before tapering for this meet. Even with the shutdowns in 2020, I was able to get just about that normal training block in before Nats in 2021, so this was the first time I've had an abbreviated season pre-Nats, let alone one this drastically short.
Anyways, that's all just to say that I had no idea going into it how I'd do at this meet. I didn't think I'd bomb it, slow times at the handful of in-season meets I went to aside, but didn't have high expectations. I signed up for events I thought I'd do decent in, but figured I'd go solidly middle of the road times at the meet.
Friday Events
I kicked off my first day of the meet with the 200 back and 100 free. I'd done the 200 back at a meet in March, but hadn't done the 100 free this season.
200 back
I entered with a seed time of 2:26 (I'd gone an unsuited 2:29 in March).
I started doing backstroke work in practice in March and had a solid 4-5 weeks of actual backstroke training under my belt by the time the meet rolled around. The last season I'd actually trained for backstroke was the 2017-2018 season, so I didn't really know what to expect. I knew that, until just the last week before the meet, in practice my stroke felt good, but my times (both in practice and at meets) were pretty far off what I was used to doing through 2018. I remember being able to hold :30-:31 for 100 pace work 50s in practice back then, and holding :33-:34 for 200 pace work 50s. This time around my 100 pace in practice was :32-:33 and my 200 pace was :36.
Historically, I've been on the 200-back-is-pure-PAIN train and the amount of pain I've been in during that race has been a good measuring stick for how well I've swum that race, with the time closely correlating to that pain. In 2013 when I went my 2:12 MPR, I literally blacked out for about a 50 of that race (I remember the first 125, then the next thing I remember was going into the 175 turn) and had to crawl out of the pool on my hands and knees.
I can't do that kind of performance with just 10 weeks of training.
Over the past couple of seasons training with the senior group in the mornings, I've been working on learning to train (and race) smarter, not necessarily harder, so while I conceptually know racing doesn't have to be maximum pain for maximum performance, it's still 20+ years of deeply ingrained racing/training habits that I'm fighting against, and I still have plenty of mental blocks about it.
All that stuff said, I came into the meet with what I thought was an ambitious target time of a 2:20.5, but was realistically going to be satisfied with a 2:21 or faster.
I went a 2:19! That was the fastest I've been since 2019, definitely my fastest without a full season under my belt, and my 10th fastest masters time out of 20 SCY swims. One key note is that with the exception of the 2:12 from 2013, my fastest masters time was a 2:16 from 2018 and I've got a whopping 11 swims in the 2:17-2:23 range, so this was statistically one of my better 200 backs.
Race video:
My race starts at 46:58. About the only critique I have for the race is that I inhaled water on my turn stroke at every wall from the 75-175, and as a result I ended up dropping 1-2 kicks off each turn. I've been training in practice to hit 5 kicks off of every turn in the 200 and have been able to consistently do so in practice, but due to the lack of a breath on the turn stroke I dropped the kicks down.
Besides that, it was a significantly better race than I anticipated. I've had some 200 backs in the past where, despite having a faster time, I've split the race poorly, but my splits were just about ideal for the time I went. Honestly, I don't really have anything negative to say about the race besides the inhaling water part, and I was able to handle that without negatively impacting my performance. I might have been able to hit a 2:18 with the 5 kicks off each wall, sure, but I have nothing to complain about with my actual time.
100 free
I really had no idea what I'd go in this. While I hadn't done a 100 free this season, I'd done several unsuited 50s free in meets during this short season, but was consistently mid :26 (my suited in season best is a :25.4 and my shaved/tapered best is a :24.9). In practice I struggled to break :30 for a single 100 pace 50, so I thought I might be anywhere from a :55 to a :58 in this race. I picked what I thought was a fairly ambitious 55.8 as my target time pre-meet, but was going to be happy with a 56.5 or faster.
Unlike the 200 back, I don't have a ton of history or mental baggage with this event. I'm not a freestyler at heart, as I am a backstroker at heart, though I've certainly become much more of a freestyler over the last 5 years or so compared to the first 25 years of my swimming career, so I don't have nearly the breadth or depth of experience in this as I do with any of the backstroke races.
I had a :55.8 goal time and went a...:55.8 😀 This was my 5th fastest masters time. I've got two :54s and two :55s faster than this swim and a whole mess of :56-:59s slower than this one, so I really can't complain about the time in the grand scheme of things.
Race video:
If it misses the time stamp, my race starts at 1:22.05. This was an excellent race till the 75 turn. It was a 100% rookie mistake on my part, but I hadn't been paying attention to my stroke count on that lap, and with the glare in the water from the angle of the sun, I couldn't really see where the wall was and flipped too early. It's not nearly as apparent in the video as it was for me in the race, but when I flipped at the 75, I barely grazed the wall with my toes and lost quite a bit of speed off that wall as a result. I'd like to think I'd have been around a :55 flat with a clean turn there, but hey, :55.8 isn't terrible for me!
Everything else about the race except for that turn was good--start, surface swimming, race strategy, breathing pattern, underwaters, all of it was good but that one turn. Live and learn!
Saturday Event
Saturday was my light day with just the 100 IM on tap. I just chilled at the hotel, ate a nice, hearty breakfast and earlyish lunch, got some extended stretching in, and just relaxed in general before heading to the pool midday.
100 IM
I really had no expectations for this event pre-meet. There are some seasons where I feel like I can actually sprint and have a top gear, but this has not been one of those seasons. On top of that, my breaststroke has felt atrocious since last summer. Given that I spent the 2017-2022 seasons working on breast and made good progress each season, I'm not sure why my breast devolved so much this season. Anyways, that's a whole 'nother topic, and suffice it to say I didn't have a good idea of what I could go in this event. I'd been an unsuited 1:04.9 in December, so picked a more or less arbitrary 1:03.5 as a goal time for this event, but had no clue if it'd be an ambitious goal time or a cakewalk.
I ended up going a 1:02.7, which is quite respectable! I'd entered with a 1:02.1 seed time that was the time I went at Nats in 2021.
Race video: It appears that USMS has taken down this video, but I expect it to go back up in the next couple of days, at which point I'll embed it here.
I had a great start, but my fly felt horribly out of sync and I couldn't get my pull and kick to mesh well, let alone get a good body rhythm, till inside the flags going into the turn. I was a little bit long (maybe 1/3 stroke too long) on that turn, but nailed everything else about the race. Going off on a bit of a tangent, I've been struggling with sprint fly this season. I've posted about it before, but my unsuited 50s fly this season have been :29s, while I was consistently going suited :27s in season just a couple seasons ago. I really don't know why I apparently can't find a top gear...or even an upper gear...in fly anymore, but I might work on it next season before deciding to write off sprint fly for good. Besides the issues with fly, that was an excellent race! It is a full 2 seconds off my masters PR from 2018, but with the exception of 1 in-season time from 2019, all 9 times I've been faster all came as shaved/tapered swims, so I don't have much to complain about.
Sunday Events
I closed out my meet with 2 final events, the 100 back and 200 free. I'd woken up in the morning with a very sore set of traps and shoulder blades despite feeling fine when I went to bed Saturday night, so I scheduled a massage for before the 100 back. The massage therapist said my upper back was a mass of knots, but she got them out and I thankfully felt much better afterward!
100 back
As I mentioned in the 200 back recap, I didn't have much of a sense of what I would go in this race. I'd been struggling to hit :32-:33 when trying to do 100 pace 50s in practice, with :31 being an all out sprint to the touch, let alone to the feet. I'd done 3 separate unsuited 50s back this season at meets and went :31s on all of them, and when I did an unsuited 100 back in March, had an awful race for a 1:07.9. Given all of that, I had what I thought was an ambitious 1:04.5 goal time pre-meet. After taking my 200 back on Friday out in a 1:07.9, I thought I might be able to go a sub-1:04, but wasn't sure.
I went a 1:02.4!
Race video: Like with the 100 IM video, USMS seems to have removed it momentarily (they're missing from midday Saturday onward, despite them being up as of shortly after each event through midafternoon today). I'll embed it here when they reupload the race video.
I decided to go HARD on the first 50 and see if I could break :31 (ha!) and try to hold on from there. Well, mission accomplished! I went deeper on the start than I expected and had to take an extra two butterfly kicks to surface, but the first 50 felt great. I started to tighten up going into the 75 turn, flipped a bit too close and got my feet stuck high on the wall and had to drag them down a bit to avoid pushing straight down on the push (which felt like it took f.o.r.e.v.e.r. but probably wasn't much longer than a normal turn for me), then really tightened up on the last 25. I locked up big time and everything SHUT DOWN in the last 12.5 yards, with the final ~5 yards being, bar none, the most excruciating final 5 yards of any 100 back I've ever swum in my entire swimming career. I dove back probably a full stroke too early on the finish, but honestly don't know if I could've physically taken another stroke, that's how bad I'd locked up. All told, that race was easily in my top 3 most painful 100 backs of all time, and since it was one of my events as an age grouper I've swum that race probably close to 75 times over the course of my career.
But I'm very happy with it! That was a slam dunk of a race, and while I might have been able to shave off a few tenths with a better 75 turn and taking another stroke at the finish, that's still my 5th fastest masters time and the fastest I've been since 2018.
200 free
Beyond all my other races, this was probably the biggest question mark in my book pre-meet. While the training I do in practice naturally lends itself to the 200 free, the short season and it being the last event of the meet made it a total question mark. Having no frame of reference, I didn't know how my comparative lack of conditioning would impact me in the 200 compared to when I've swum it at other meets. In practice, I'd been consistently hitting :31-:32 on 200 pace 50s, while in seasons past I've held :30, so I knew I wasn't going to go near my masters PR of 2:01. I figured a 2:04.5 would be an ambitious goal time for the 200 if it were the only event I were to swim at the meet, but more realistically figured a 2:06 or faster would likely be reasonable given its place in my event lineup.
I went a 2:05.3.
Race video: Same as the last few.
Honestly, this was a solid swim. I paid for that 100 back big time on this race--while from a technique and pacing standpoint this was a solid race, I was running on fumes and was totally gassed. I didn't fall apart, for the first time in recent memory I swam this race without choking on water from the wakes of the guys next to me, and there was nothing wrong about this race except for the lack of get up and go. This was still my 7th fastest 200 free I've done as a masters swimmer, so nothing at all wrong with this time.
I think this is the first race where the lack of a full training cycle under my belt really made an appearance. Last spring at Nats was when I went my 2:01.1 MPR (with splits of :27, :30, :31, :31), but I'd had an excellent training cycle that season. Both as a coach and as a swimmer, I don't think you can really nail 200s by themselves without putting the work in all season, and you definitely can't nail multiple 200s over a 3 day meet without putting that work in, and this was a case in point.
For what it was, I'm happy with this and am even happier that my comparative lack of conditioning waited till my last event of the meet to make an appearance! 😁
Miscellaneous Other Thoughts
One of the many Olympians entered in the meet was Markus Rogan. He's a few years older than me and swam for the age group team I now coach and is that team's most accomplished alumnus--represented Austria at the Olympics from 2000-2012, was a double silver medalist in the 100 and 200 back in 2004, was the SCM Worlds gold medalist in the 200 back in 2008 and also held the SCM WR that year in that event.
I tracked him down, introduced myself, and got to chat with him for a bit on Friday, then ran into him behind the blocks for most of my races. Super nice guy! I also got a big kick out of him giving me a fist bump and wishing me luck before my 200 free today.
Speaking of Olympians, there were a ton at this meet! On Friday during warmup, I shared a lane with Jenny Thompson (one of the American mainstays from 1992-2004) and Gabrielle Rose (1996 for Brazil and 2000 for the US). Growing up Jenny Thompson was one of my idols, so it was surreal sharing a lane with her here!
Overall Thoughts
I was quite pleasantly surprised with how this meet turned out. For those of you who've followed my blog and/or my ramblings on Facebook, you know I'm generally pretty critical about my swimming. I give myself a hard time about pretty much everything I do in the water, but I thrive on intrinsic motivation. I know I'm not fast enough to pretty much ever place at Nationals outside of the gimme events like the 200 back and sometimes the 100 back, where there are inexplicably usually never more than 10 swimmers and I place by default, but I train and race because I genuinely love to do so, and love to do so no matter what kind of shape I'm in or if I come remotely close to placing.
I loved everything about this meet, even with all the stumbles and starts and stops I had during this season that prevented me from getting anywhere near to a full training cycle under my belt in preparation for this meet. The 100 back was the home run success story here, but every other race was good in its own way, even the 200 free. I knew I wasn't going to realistically set any MPRs at this meet, but this was still an unqualified success of a meet!
Since this meet capped off such a short season, I decided to go back and compare my times to my best times from suited swims at meets from more or less comparative time periods (ie, November-December, +/- a few weeks) in seasons past. Obviously I wasn't partially shaved and tapered, but I was suited at those meets and my conditioning was pretty analagous to my conditioning right now. I didn't race some of those events until January, so those would've benefited from an extra couple of months of conditioning; I've marked those with an asterisk. The long and short of it is that while none of these are a true 1:1 comparison, they should all be directionally accurate comparisons between events.
- 200 back (January 2017): 2:19.6*
- 200 back here: 2:19.4
- 100 free (December 2019): 55.3
- 100 free here: 55.8
- 100 IM (January 2019): 1:02.5*
- 100 IM here: 1:02.7
- 100 back (December 2018): 1:03.6
- 100 back here: 1:02.4
- 200 free: (November 2019): 2:03.2
- 200 free here: 2:05.3
Looking Ahead to Next Year
I'm not mentally burned out! I'm planning to take a few days off to relax, then get back at it later this week. Short course Nats next year are going to be in June in Indy at IUPUI. While Nats had outgrown the facility in 2018, the last time it was there, I hope this time they'll have something figured out to accomodate the likely size of the meet.
Since the meet is approximately 2 months later than spring Nats normally is (they're doing it in June to coincide with the last few days of Olympic Trials, also in Indy), I'm excited to see what the extra 2 months will do for my training cycle, presuming I stay healthy and don't have any more major training disruptions. I will be getting one more tattoo at some point this summer/fall in memory of my dad, but it'll be a much smaller forearm tattoo that should only take one session and only keep me out of the water for a week, +/- a few days.
After my successes with backstroke here, I'm planning to double down on backstroke for next season. I'm ecstatic with my times after only about a month of focused backstroke training and subpar conditioning, so with a full+ training cycle and continuous focused backstroke training, I don't think it's out of the question to get back towards my 2013 MPRs of 1:00 and 2:12 for the 100 and 200 back, respectively. I don't know if I'll be able to surpass those times, but I certainly think I could approach them! I also want to get back into seriously training for the 100 fly, as although I didn't end up swimming it at the meet except in the 100 IM, I've been happy with my (non-sprint) fly in practice lately. Presuming my shoulders stay healthy (I believe I've mentioned it in other posts, but I've had micro tears in the labrums in both shoulders that have flared up off and on since 2016 or so and have impacted my ability to swim fly when they flare up) the 100 fly is a definite.
Besides those 3 events, I'm not sure what else to enter. If I can figure out how to get my breaststroke halfway decent again after the aberration of this season, the 200 IM is likely a go. If I can figure out how to sprint again, the 100 IM is a freebie. I might toss in the 200 free again if my training goes well, but I might take a season off from it.
Events I plan to do in-season, but with no current intentions to do at Nats, are the 200 fly, 400 IM, and 500 free. They'll probably be events I'll do at spring meets with a solid 4+ months of training under my belt, but I'd like to do them just as benchmarks. Now, if I'm magically blown away with how I do in them next spring, who knows, they might become possibilities for Nats entries, but I'll have to carefully weigh them against the other events.
All in all, I'm significantly more excited about this next season than I was after Nats last spring!
