Flashes of Panic

Three-day meets, I mean. Four-day, counting last weekend.

• Races: 10, 5 individual and 5 relays.
• Yards raced: 2350, 1850 in individual events and 500 in relays.
• Yards in warm-up or cool-down: Well in excess of 3,000, I’d guess.
• Points scored: 19 by myself, plus part of relays scoring 66 more.
• Points by which we beat the next team in our division: 1849.5
• Hours spent at the Harvard pool: I prefer not to think about it, but on Saturday alone, at least ten.
• Strokes swum in competition: three.
• Years since I had last done a backstroke start from the blocks: 16.
• Individual races where I beat my best previous time for that yards distance: 5.
• Races where I nonetheless didn’t beat the time predicted by my meters time last December: 1.
• Times I haven’t yet listed, because I will inevitably come back to this entry someday to see how fast I was:
• • 50y BR: 37.09

• • 200y FR: 2:22.67
• • 500y FR: 6:33.45
• 20 oz. bottles of Gatorade consumed: 3.
• Tubs of Gatorade powder used in multiple refills of those 20 oz. bottles: 2/3.
• Chocolate chocolate chip cookies consumed: I lost count.
• Blade shaves: 2
• Alumni of The College present for a group photo: 8, plus one parent. (Oldest, class of ‘59; youngest, ‘02; one other from my class present on Saturday, but not on Sunday for the photo.)
• Alumni of my high school swim team present and swimming: At least four, starting in the 50+ age group. One other spotted in December but not here this weekend.
• Relays disqualified (“Deeked,” an abbreviation for “DQ”) by those alumni on Friday night: 2. (My brother blames his club coach, who said, “If you’re not cheating, you’re not trying.”)
• Number of chances I had to deek a third relay today with illegal backstroke turns: 3. Illegal turns: 0.
• Number of heats by which the field size for the men’s 100y IM exceeded the men’s 100y FR: 3.
• Number of swimmers claimed for the whole meet: 850.
• Number of masters swim meets in the world larger than this one: 2.

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