Masters Nationals

Friday May 10th in the afternoon I left for Indianapolis for the Short Course Masters National Championships. In the last couple of years Dan Sheahan also participated but this year he's been mostly at the east coast and couldn't make it this weekend. So, it would be only me representing the Spokane Waves Masters. I arrived around 10 pm or so at the hotel which, with a three hour time zone difference, was just early evening Spokane time. This caused the first problem: getting to sleep. Based on this I decided to forego the first warm-up period on Saturday (over by 7:30am, i.e. 4:30am Spokane time) and show up for the second warm-up around 9:30am (still early).

Saturday:
Woke up but felt the lack of sleep. I got to the warm-up and this is usually hectic in the competition pool, but by now I'm somewhat used to it. After the warm-up in the competition pool I continued in the warm-up pool. I felt pretty good overall, the swimming went pretty smooth and especially the breaststroke felt good and smooth. This was going to be a good day! One issue I had a little bit was that on Monday (6th) I had injured my leg and although I had tried to be careful with it during the week, it was still hurting. Nevertheless, during warm-up I didn't feel too bad about it.
My first event was the 100 free. It did not go as planned because I added two seconds to my best time. Result: a 47th spot. Not great, but then again, still in the top-50 of the nation (in my age group). Also, when coming out of the water, I noticed that my swimsuit was letting go at the seams, so before creating a scene, I decided it was time to get another one of my swimsuits on. :-)  Now, normally I might have said that I was swimming so fast that my swimsuit couldn't keep up with it, but obviously my results weren't there so I can't sustain that thought. Maybe instead what happened is that the seem created so much drag that it severely slowed me down. I'm not sure, just offering a thought here...
My second event was the 100 breast. I was seeded 15th for this event. My best result overall at Nationals in previous years was a 17th spot ranking last year (also for the 100 breast event) so I was excited at the opportunity to improve my ranking. Well, THAT didn't happen. I went 5 seconds slower than my personal best. My leg did act up during the race and I was afraid to push it too much so I think I lost power from the legs. Result: a disappointing 22nd spot in the rankings. The (replacement) swimsuit, for those interested, held up fine by the way.
That late afternoon at dinner, still being pretty upset how the day had gone, I figured that I need to do more training (haven't trained that much this year, for comparison, in 2012 from January until Nationals I swam about 775K yards, this year only 150K yards, a substantial difference!) and the next championship meet is European Championships in September. Although I'm not completely sure that I can participate, during dinner I designed a rough training schedule for the next three months. Based on this day's results, I was determined to do better at the next meet. Later in the day I tried to stretch my leg muscles and I went to bed earlier. I decided to forego the entire warm-up in the competition pool for the next day since my first event (and most important event of the entire meet) wasn't until in the afternoon. Instead, I decided to sleep in a little more and then slowly make my way to the pool.

Sunday:
After getting up more relaxed and rested, I made my way to the pool. I did my warm-up in the warm-up pool and with the 200 breast coming up, I decided to do a lot of kicking during warm-up to warm-up in particular my leg muscles. It felt okay. After the warm-up I went to to the stands to watch others swimmers. Having sat in the stands a while, I noticed that my leg started hurting again, so I did another short warm-up with kicking just before my race.
Bottom-line is that I had made up my mind about the upcoming race. I was seeded 11th. I haven't swam 200 breast at a national championship before and I've never been seeded that high so this was exciting.  Also exciting was that the top-10 get a medal. I was determined to get a medal. While watching the first heats of the event I noticed how some people really slow down at the end of the pull-down from the turn due to losing form in the water. This is something that in the past has worked okay for me, although it takes breath control, and I told myself to focus on this in my race and try to make those pull-downs work for me even if I almost pass out due to a lack of oxygen. I put tigerbalm on my leg to warm the muscles and keep them warm. Most important maybe, I figured that after Saturday I could still walk okay. My leg wasn't worse. So, probably I was still going to be able to walk after the 200 breast on Sunday and although it might be painful, it probably wouldn't be worse after the race, i.e. I didn't think I would do damage but that it was just an issue of comfort level. I told myself that I was going to ignore the leg and simply go for that medal.
Since there are 8 people in a heat, I was in the second heat, placed third in the heat. Thus, I knew that I had to finish 2nd in the heat and I would be in the top-10. The fastest seed was a 2:37 in lane 4, then lane 5 had somebody with a 2:41 and then me in lane 3 with a 2:42. I had already swam a 2:41 recently and based on my 100 breast time, I thought (and Kevin had confirmed a similar thought) that I should be able to swim a 2:36-2:39 despite my not so great training this year.
My plan was to stick with the swimmer in lane 4 (assuming lane 5 wouldn't be able to do so, and that would earn me a 2nd spot in the heat). At the start, I was with lane 4, at the 25 turn, I noticed lane 2 was already behind (I turn to the right so I could see this lane to my right) so I didn't have to worry about him. At the 50, I turned a little after lanes 4 and 5 but we were close. This pattern basically repeated itself. Essentially, I would turn at the 50, 100 and 150 mark just after lane 4 and 5 but my pull-downs were better and so I would be ahead slightly (at least I thought so) but they apparently swam faster because they would reach the wall at the other end sooner. Curiously, I wasn't really registering to me that lane 5 was also ahead of me as I was mostly focused on lane 4. In other words, I was still thinking that if I stuck with lane 4 I would be okay. Weird how the mind works (or doesn't work). Overall, being close was essential for me because in the past best 200 breast races for me I would be able to speed up during the third and fourth 50 and often the competition would not be able to do that. This time, I wasn't able to accelerate during the third 50 but I had it in my mind to go for it during the last 50. Thus, being close at the 150 mark was ideal. This is when I was going to unleash. I was going to shock and awe the competition in this last 50. They would be totally surprised. With that in my mind, I gave it my all during the last 50, thinking of the medal... Unfortunately, I helplessly noticed lane 4 pulling ahead of me. I simply didn't seem to be able to go any faster so lane 4 finished first (a little over a second ahead of me as I found out later). I looked around at the score board and to my relief saw that I finished 2nd. Time: 2:36, a drop of five seconds in my personal best. YES! A top-10 spot, a medal! Well, I wasn't completely relaxed about that just yet. I was waiting for official results because who knows, maybe I got DQed or something. I had to wait until after my next event for the official results but luckily I didn't get DQed. In fact, I moved up another two spots and finished 8th. Thus, eight in the nation on the 200 breast (in my age category) and the first time that a Waves masters swimmer earns points and a medal at Nationals. I was ecstatic about that. Now, on hindsight, and looking at the splits: here is what really happened. Lane 5 was slightly ahead at the 50, 100 and 150 mark but the three of us (lanes 3, 4 and 5) were essentially within around a second of each other throughout the entire race. During the last 50, when I was racing lane 4 next to me, is when lane 5 'lost' it. He finished just 0.05 seconds behind me. He must have been pretty upset at that result but luckily for him, he also moved up to 9th and so still got a medal.
With this event out of the way, I relaxed a little and then warmed-up for my last race, the 50 free. I was a little too relaxed because when I came out of the warm-up pool and showed up at the competition pool to check where they were, I saw to my shock that I was up! I ran to my block (other end of the pool) where the timers were just writing down the time of the previous swimmer. I had barely time to think and off we went. Had I delayed another 30 seconds, I would have missed the event! The time was so-so, I was 0.5 seconds slower than my best time and ranked 44th. Who cares? Not me, I got 8th on the breaststroke and that is all that mattered. Well, of course what mattered also was picking up the medal after my cool-down. It was/is huge. I think it is 30 inches wide, it barely fits across my chest. I couldn't hang it around my neck due to the weight. Oh wait, that was my visualization. It is actually quite a nice medal and it felt great to be able to pick it up and hold it in my hands and know for sure that this accomplishment was/is real.

Some stats: 1633 swimmers representing 204 local teams and an additional 20 regional teams. All in all I ranked; 100 free: 47th; 100 breast: 22nd; 200 breast: 8th; and 50 free: 44th.
In the evening I flew back home. I got home after midnight and despite my best intentions earlier in the week, I decided to skip the 5:30 am practice this morning.
Today (Monday) my leg is actually feeling much better :-)
Another nice championship experience for me and after 5 consecutive championships the first time to place in the top-10. Now, we got to try to improve on that and get more masters swimmers to join me so that as a team, we can earn more points and do relays. Care to join me next time????