Meet Yesterday (06/07/08)

I swam in my first ever LCM meet yesterday. It was... interesting. My lower back was in pain, which really sucked, especially breathing to my right side on freestyle, but I swam through it.

Times:
3:07 in the 200m breast
2:39 in the 200m back
20:47 in the 1500m free

I was the only one in the 200m breast, and I just kept it long because I had to swim the 200 back about 15 minutes later. It felt ok. I wasn't feeling as good a rhythm as I've been able to establish in practice.

The 200m back hit my seed time. I felt the best about this race, and I think that my backstroke is my best LCM stroke. That's probably because it's my most polished stroke, since I'd spent so much of my late teens and early twenties working on it. Still, I was all over the lane while swimming outside. I think the key is to try to site the lane line from the corner of my eye, at least for now.

I tried working the thumb-first recovery. Traditionally, I've brought the back of the hand out of the water first. The thumb-first method slices through the water on my recovery and feels a lot faster. It felt awkward to be rotating my hand more through the recovery to turn it toward the pinky for entry, but I think it will help my turnover improve.

The 1500m was a learning experience. 20:47 converts to my best in-season time yet (20:03 1650), so I can't complain. A quick note here about conversions, though: they are at best rough estimates. I have strong walls and my stroke is weaker, so a 1650 would likely have been under 20. I had been out in the sun for too long, and every time I turned to the sun side to breathe, I felt like my face was frying. That, coupled with my back pain, meant my head wasn't at all in the race. I conceded the race before 200m was up.

Still, I'm glad I swam the 1500. As crappy as I was feeling, I kept going, and I didn't just want to puke or get out of the pool, like I did during the 1650 at states. So I think that my base is improving, that's a bonus. Plus, I wanted a benchmark to work with because I've been doing almost all aerobic swimming. Those timed 50s on Thursday were the first fast swimming I'd done since Nationals in early May. All, in all, this was an ok swim.

I'll have to decide on some goals for the summer long course. Do I want to just fatten my aerobic base and not worry about fast swimming? Do I want to pick a meet or event and work towards that? I think the latter, and I'm going to have to work some faster swimming in soon. If nothing else, I'm going to have to start picking sets to just blast on.