Flashes of Panic

The meet was very informal, and once they knew how many competitors they had for each event they adapted the heats to combine some men’s and women’s heats and insert warm-up and cool-down periods between events rather than running spare lanes for that purpose and crowding the race schedule. The field skewed old; there were only three of us in the male 30-39 age group, and in the 200 free a 25-year-old woman won outright, both because she was that good and because the fastest men were sticking to the sprint events. (She would’ve beaten me, I’m pretty sure.) A fair number of people swam strokes other than crawl in the 200 free, presumably in order to figure out seed times for New Englands.

• 100 free: I seeded at 1:09, which made me the fast seed for the slow heat. However, one of the other guys must have been sandbagging, because he had half a body-length on me by the first turn. I was glad I hadn’t entered any of the 50y races; I was pretty much swimming flat-out in this two-lap race and I was still getting dusted. Coming in on the last length, I could see the clock tick past 59 and into the minute-plus range whenever I looked up to breathe. I couldn’t figure out if that meant I was swimming well, though. I had to think about maintaining form and not just thrashing. I wound up beating my seed with a 1:07, but the other guy went 1:05 low. Ironically, he was the only other entrant in the 30-39 age group for the 100 free, so I wound up “second.”

• 500 free: I got a good block of recovery time before the long race, and just had to do a little scrambling to find someone to count laps for me. Which was something of a trial, considering how outgoing I’m not; there was literally nobody on the deck I’d ever met before this afternoon. I was seeded second of four in the fast heat here; true to form, I am more competitive in the longer races. I seeded myself at 6:40, an ambitious nine seconds faster than my time from last year (not quite a second per lap.) The fastest seed was in at 6:20 and the third was 6:45, so I figured I wouldn’t see much of first but would have to scrap for second. Instead I found both of them (in lanes on either side of me) tantalizingly close for much of the first half of the race. In hindsight, I should have realized this meant I was out too fast. My splits (leaving out the first lap, which is always fast because of the block start) got slower with every lap, and by halfway I could really feel Saturday’s skiing in my triceps: I just couldn’t pull hard. I should have settled into an easier pace sooner. The swimmers on either side of me were pulling away, and the fourth one in our heat looked like we’d left him behind long ago. Despite the dead arms, I was able to pick up the pace through the last hundred, and I wound up hitting my seed exactly with a 6:40.

• 100 br: Hey, wait, I think I could use a bit more rest. I just finished racing. Oh, OK, here we go. I seeded at 1:20 here, figuring the extra breaststroke drills I’ve done over the last few weeks might get me a good bump over last year’s 1:29. Oh, optimism. Maybe they would have helped, if I hadn’t drawn so deeply on my strength reserves for the 500. My form was falling apart by the end of the first lap, as though I’d had no rest at all between races. I wasn’t reaching off the turns (desperate for air) nor was my stroke “long and strong” in any respect. There were four of us in this event, and I was third with a 1:27. This was an improvement, of course, but I shouldn’t have hoped for so much more.

I was pretty blasted at this point, having done as much (and faster) in two hours as I did all day at New Englands last year (albeit with less warm-up and cool-down.) I felt like I’d earned something, but cupcakes and McDonalds’ fries didn’t quite seem like it. Maybe the chili I have planned is more like it.