Of Swimming Bondage

I think my vacation and work travel plans will prevent me from being around Arizona for most of, if not all of, our AZ Masters meets this summer, so I took the opportunity to swim the 1500 this morning at the Scottsdale Aquatic Club's USAS Cactus Classic. This is the first year I've attended this meet since 2005 without a child swimming and without me having a significant volunteer role in putting the show on, so it was very nice to be able to roll onto the deck with only racing to think about. I cajoled my youngest daughter into coming along as my timer with the promise of seeing her old swimming friends and bacon for lunch!

I was in the second fastest heat of boys/men and had entered my fastest time from the summer of 2014, 18:18.18, but not my very fastest time of 17:49.08 from 2011. I was in lane 2 and there was a kid next to me in 3 seeded at 17:38. You never know what teenaged boys will do, especially at the start of the season, I just determined to swim my own race and see what happened. While he went out ahead of me through the first 500, I started to catch him in the second 500 and had pulled ahead of him by around the 1200. My core was hurting pretty badly by that point and, after a couple of failed attempts at the start of the 13th and 14th 100s to pick up the pace, I resolved to just hang on until the last 50 and then see what I had. He had caught me by the 1450 and we both pushed hard on the last 50. I managed to prevail by 0.6 seconds and recorded my second best ever Masters 1500 at 18:10.81. I was super pleased with the time as, back in June of 2011, I had started the season at 18:15 and then hit the 17:49 later in the summer. I am hoping that I can race this at least two more times this summer and, if possible, do the last one with some rest, shave and a fast suit.

Splits were pretty solid by 300s - 3:34.32, 3:39.20, 3:39.65, 3:41.36, 3:36.28 - and by 500s - 6:00.45, 6:06.07, 6:04.29.

On yeah, yesterday, I had done my 100 SCM fly for Stage 2 of the Swimtathlon and was 1:07.28.

The rest of June looks pretty light from a racing perspective. I hope to swim the 400 IM at a USAS meet on June 25th, but I don't see my weekends permitting any other racing until then.