Fast Food Makes for Fast Swimming!

I drove over and back to/from Spokane, Washington today for the final day of a 3-day pentathlon meet. Friday night they did the short version, 50s plus 100 IM. Saturday was the 100s plus 200 IM. Today was the day I went for: 200s plus 400 IM. Gotta get my money's worth of course!

I was tired this morning for sure. Yesterday I ended up working 8 hours of OT in the morning, then did plenty more unpaid work at home to finish my night. We had all the cousins over here with my kids last night, so we decided to rent a movie from the RedBox - "Wreck It Ralph". A good kids movie, very funny, and did actually teach life lessons. That set me back to about 10:30pm for bedtime though.

Alarm went off at 4:30am and I was out the door for my almost 3 hour drive to Spokane. USAS meets have such darn early warmups, and then the meets last most of the day as well. That's the bummer part of the whole thing...otherwise I love every bit of them, especially the great competition!

Team Warmup:

500 Free
3 x 200 "IM" stroke down/free back @ ~1:00 rest
8 x 50 Build Choice (did 1 Fly, 7 Free) @ 1:15
2 x Dive 25s (1 Fly, 1 Free)
(1550 yards)

I did plenty of cooling down after each of the following races, but ZERO warmup prior to any of them. That's how I roll...

400 IM - 4:38.60
27.6 / 31.8 (59.4)
36.7 / 37.1 (1:13.8)
41.4 / 40.6 (1:22.0)
32.0 / 31.6 (1:03.6)
This was a season best time for me by 2 seconds, but I wasn't very happy with it. My legs just killed me after a 50 of the backstroke. Probably the lack of rest, plus sitting in a car for 3 hours prior to this didn't help. I'll go faster in a couple weeks.

Got in a Power Nap in my chair here for about 30 minutes

200 Back - 2:17.89
31.9 / 35.3 / 35.6 / 35.2
Right on the time I did a couple weeks ago at the LMSC Masters Champs meet. I was huffing and puffing afterward, and my legs still weren't happy with me.

Another Power Nap in the chair...who knows how long, but each event was spaced out almost 1 1/2 hours or more.

200 Breast - 2:32.65
34.3 / 38.5 / 39.5 / 39.6
Good season best time, I can live with it. I had explosive wall pushoffs, and my pullouts carried me a long way, so I didn't have to swim much. That's the goal of breaststroke - not to have to do very much, right?

Power Nap right up till 2 heats before I swam the next one - the parent next to me woke me up to see if I wanted to swim or not.

200 Fly - 2:10.09
28.2 / 32.6 / (1:09.2 2nd 100)
This one felt pretty okay. I was back and forth with the boy next to me, each of us taking turns leading the other. Good race. I ended up 4th place in this race, my only ribbon-worthy swim of the day. I need to remember to keep my head down on the 1st stroke off each wall in this race. If I breathe first thing, it slows my momentum for the entire 25, and then I start sucking...

200 Free - 1:55.33 (Masters Best Time - at least untapered/unshaved)
27.0 / 29.9 / 29.9 / 28.7
I didn't feel excellent as I stepped up onto the blocks for this one, so I decided to start out easy and see what happened. The kids next to me got out ahead in the first 100, but I kept them close. Started giving more power in the 3rd 50, and kept going on the 4th 50. The final 25 though is where I really made up ground, over a bodylength on the boy next to me to finish strong. This makes me happy leading into Nationals to be able to have a best time like that.