It's been a long time since I've swum at Zones! The last one I swam at was at GMU in 2019. This time around, it was at the Jeff Rouse Swim Center in Stafford.
The meet used to be held at George Mason University, but after covid the former meet host decided not to host it anymore, and it was up at Rutgers the past few years. I don't travel for Zones, so this was my first Zones in 5 years. Honestly, with the exception of doing backstroke starts in this pool, I like it better than GMU.
This was my first multiday masters meet when I've been in as comparatively poor swimming shape as I am this season, so going into the meet I was prepared to lay an egg in some of my races due to poor swim conditioning. I signed up for five events: 200 back, 200 IM, and 100 free on Saturday and 100 back and 200 free on Sunday.
Saturday Events
200 Back
This was frankly a better race than I expected! This was just my second time swimming the 200 back this season and I didn't have much in the way of expectations going into it. I left probably about a second in the pool due to an absolutely atrocious start and an inadvertently super-long turn at the 125, but a 2:22 puts me just about smack dab in the middle of my historical 200 back times, and once you take out the 5 different times I've swum it at Nats when I've been fully trained, shaved, and tapered, and this compares quite well to my fastest suited in-season time on record of a 2:18 from all the way back in 2013. More recently, 2017 was the last season I was faster than this swim in-season.
Final time aside, I split this quite well. That was my biggest concern going into this race, that I'd take it out too fast and not have the conditioning to bring it home, but I split this just about ideally for how I swim the 200 back. Going back to my MPR from 2013 when I got a very solid training block under my belt and focused almost exclusively on backstroke that season, I split that race 30-33-34-34, so with the exception of all of my splits here being correspondingly slower, they line up pretty well in comparison. Looking at my other times from Nats over the years, they all follow that general pattern, so this swim was in good company!
200 IM
I mean, I guess I dropped time from the one random 200 IM I swam last season? I haven't trained IM at all this season and haven't trained breast at all in two seasons, and it shows. Fly and back felt good, I had absolutely nothing on breast (it legit felt like I was treading water), and while I've definitely had slower (some significantly slower!) free splits on my 200 IM over the years, that particular split was on the wrong side of the trend line.
Stripping out my trained/shaved/tapered 200 IMs, this comes in at 13th out of 17 200 IMs I've done as an adult. Obviously not great, but could've been worse, and it was indeed a nearly 6 second drop over my seed time from that one swim last season, so there's that.
100 Free
I've raced more this season than I have since 2019, despite my concurrent lackadaisical approach to training, and one of the refrains at every single meet has been that I don't have a top gear this season. I haven't been able to find that top end speed in any stroke this season, and that was the case in this event, too.
Besides being a goofball and turning too far out from the wall at the 75 turn and nearly missing the wall in the process, this was a good race. I probably left a couple tenths in the pool on that last turn, but it likely wouldn't have substantially moved the needle for my overall race.
My speed kerfluffle was mostly seen just in the first 50--as recently as at Nats last year, I was able to take the first 50 out a full second faster, while my second 50 here was less than a second slower than last year. Looking at Nats in 2021, after the short covid season, my first 50 was about 1.5 seconds faster. Looking back at other 100s I've done over the years, that pattern more or less holds true--conditioning and the botched turn pretty much explains the gap on the second 50, but the first 50 is inexplicably slow.
Oh well! I don't often swim this in season, with nearly an even split of my 100s free swum at Nats vs in-season, but this was still faster than about half of my in-season swims, so I can't really complain too much.
Sunday Events
I had the 100 back and 200 free on the docket for Sunday. I was honestly worried going into the session--two day meets, especially ones where you don't just swim short events, is tiring even when you're fully in shape. I am not. Driving to the pool, I felt like I was at about 75% energy and had all sorts of aches and pains from the previous day's racing, despite a very long cooldown, lots of stretching, and liberal use of a massage gun Saturday night. I repeated that regimen Sunday morning when I got to the pool, but was still nowhere near top shape. I decided to just take the events as they came and try to have no expectations.
100 Back
This was WAY better than I expected! My start was merely adequate, though light years better than the absolutely atrocious start I had in the 200 back, I jammed the 50 turn, and probably should've taken another stroke at the finish. Still, after taking out all the Nats swims, the last time I was faster than this in-season was alllllll the way back in 2015. Between the three wall issues, I probably could've been down in the low 1:03/high 1:02 range, which would've put my only faster in-season times back in the stellar backstroke season of 2013.
Going off on a bit of a tangent, I think the main reason I did so well in this race was because I had a legit competitor in the lane next to me. Back in the 2012-2013 season, when I focused almost exclusively on backstroke, there was a local swim friend that I competed against multiple times in the 100 back, usually in lanes next to each other. We had some epic duels at various in-season meets and us trading off wins from meet to meet was a key factor in my backstroke success that season. Fast forward to this race and it was like time warping back to the '12-'13 season. I was better underwater than the dude next to me and he was better on the surface. We swam neck and neck for most of the first 75, then stroke for stroke the last 25, and it came down to .2 at the finish. It was great!
I've raced the 100 back a lot since 2013, but whether at an in-season meet or at Nats, I've almost always either been comfortably in the lead or haven't been in the picture (e.g. at one Nats where I went a 1:01, if memory serves, the dude in the lane next to me went something like a 50 point). Having an actual competitor in the lane next to me was awesome and I wish I could have that experience every time I race, 100 back or any other event!
200 Free
Eh, I'll take it!
Frankly, I was gassed after the 100 back and it being the end of a long meet. This was a season best by juuuuuuust about 5 seconds and my race was delightfully well split in comparison to many of my previous 200s free, but it was definitely slow in the grand scheme of things. I might have left a second or so in the pool over the course of the race despite there not being any clear issues like with, say, my start in both backstroke races, but I think this one can be chalked up to a lack of conditioning, being tired, and lack of top end speed in general. My fastest in-season time that I've got splits for was a 2:04 from the spring of '22, and in that swim I went out nearly 2.5 seconds faster on the first 100 than I did here, though my second half splits were relatively comparable.
Overall Thoughts
All foibles with turns/starts/finishes aside, there are a few clear takeaways from this meet, thankfully mostly positive:
- With this meet capping my season, I've officially gotten back into the ballpark of my pre-covid number of meets each season. Pre-covid I was consistently racing at anywhere between 8-13 meets per season between masters meets and age group meets, but the '18-'19 season was the last full season I was able to hit those numbers. I was well on track in '20, but only finished up the aborted season with I think 5 meets. Since then a number of the regular pre-covid masters meets didn't come back, I took a few seasons off from racing with my NCAP kids, and I also had scheduling conflicts with a few of the relative few masters meets still on the calendar. As a result, since I was doing so few meets each season, I was permanently rusty when it came time to race, regardless of my actual conditioning. I'm over that hump now! That's not to say that I don't still have kerfluffles when racing (cough, cough, 200 IM, cough, cough), but for the past two meets, I've actually felt confident for the upcoming race when stepping up to the block.
- All season I've felt like I've had very little power in my underwaters--for me, when those are my key selling point as a swimmer and have often been the deciding factor in races, that's a BIG deal. Whether in practice or at a meet, all season I've consistently felt like I'm not getting nearly enough power or speed from my underwater dolphin kicks. That changed at this meet! I don't know for sure if I was back to my old levels, but I was quite happy with the speed and power I got off all the walls when doing UDKs, even when gassed in the 200 free. I'm sure racing in a speedo vs tech suit plays some role in that, but whatever the reason, I'm happy to finally have had good underwaters again!
- I've gotta figure out my top end speed issue, particularly in free. The tricky issue is that my free *feels* fine and I *feel* like I'm swimming any other, faster, 100 and 200 free that I've ever swum...just the speed isn't at all there. It's the same issue in fly, though not quite as drastic as in free. Even looking back at seasons where I've had an abridged training block or what have you, it's way more of an issue this season in both strokes than in years past. It's just the top end speed, too--back end speed on those races has been comparatively much better than front end, so that tells me it's a speed issue vs an endurance issue at this time.
Onward and upward!
