Flashes of Panic

I did, in fact, get a decent start in the 100m free, and I could also tell that I was well-seeded; I was in lane 6, and the swimmers on either side of me were not pulling away. For me, even 100m is a sprint, so I didn’t waste much time on “pacing myself.” I just focused all my effort on maintaining form while cranking my arms around as fast as possible.

For me, though, that’s too many things to think about: get the left arm engaged and pulling as soon as possible. Don’t roll too much. Remember to kick effectively instead of just beating eggs. Hey, don’t forget that left arm. And turn now. It was as though someone hit the fast-forward right after they whistled us on to the blocks.

I wound up doing pretty well; my 1:14.46 beat my seed by about a second and a half, and I was 5th in my age group. (Out of 5, of course, one being my brother and the other that high school teammate I mentioned yesterday.) But I couldn’t help thinking: what if I’d been able to put those pieces together?

The breaststroke… well, that pretty much balanced it out. My goggles flipped down over my cheeks during the start. I was annoyed, but if you’re going to lose your goggles, the only better stroke is backstroke. You spend a lot of time head-up. So I was a bit choppy, but I figured the race wasn’t blown.

Then I hit the first turn, and they flipped back up onto my eyes with a full load of water. It didn’t occur to me at the time, but I figure I was probably seeing about as much as Marla Runyan can. I popped up too fast off the turn, and now I was genuinely off my game. Coming up to the halfway turn, I saw a blob of yellow, knew it was the touch pad, and thought, OK, I should be turning in one or two BAM! and I was over and off on the second lap.

1:42.27 is actually not too bad, and only about four seconds slower than my seed time. The goggles couldn’t have actually slowed me down much (except a smidge on the first length, where I could feel them dragging on my face.) What they did was blow my form, and that’s a killer in breaststroke.

So in both races, I came out of the pool feeling like I could’ve done better, and wishing for another, better shot at it. Once I’d cooled down and was showering, though, I realized that that was the same feeling I had after every single meet in high school. In my very last high school swim meet, a last-chance qualifier (and I never qualified for anything,) I wound up swimming the 100y breaststroke with my goggles around my neck. My memory is hazy (it’s been fourteen years,) but I think I was pretty frustrated. I may have thrown the goggles; I may have actually dropped out of the race, which is pretty rare in swimming.

It’s pretty clear that I should be better at this. It’s possible, though, that I will enjoy it more if I don’t worry about doing better, or even about doing the best I can—if I just show up, race, and treat it like luck, not skill.