As triathletes go, I can hold my own pretty well in the water. My only swimming goal for this year is a 55-minute Ironman swim and I think I'm on a good pace to reach that by the end of June. Against actual swimmers I don't fare as well. I used to.... but I think those days are past.
This weekend was the Ocean County YMCA Unofficial Team Championships. As part of the team "rah-rah" score points thing, I signed up for 5 events: 1000 Free, 200 Free, 100 IM, 500 Free, 50 Back. I also got talked into two 50's as part of relays. A lot of yardage for a swim meet, but since I was blowing off a 3.5 hour ride for the day I had to make the most of it.
The meet was packed. Three teams - Jersey Area Masters (my team), Ridgewood Y, and OCY - decided to make a go of it so there were around 120 swimmers and most of them swam lots of events. There were 7 heats (10 lanes each heat) of the 1,000. 9 for the 500. It was a long day.
My thousand went 'ok'. I was in the end lane of heat 6 of 7 swimming next to the warm-up lane. To make it worse, the guy in the lane next to me no-showed and I couldn't see the other swimmers. I finished the swim in 12:55. I think I could have done better. The guy counting for me told me he could tell the extact lap I started to get tired. My stroke smoothed out and got real long. That is great for Ironman. Bad for competetion. I came in 2nd in my age group but pretty far down in the overall placement.
Good for Ironman, how? Well a 12:55 swim averages out to a around a 1:17 for a 100 yards. The pace chart claims that works out to a 52-minute IM swim. Oh yea... and I'll get to wear a wetsuit for IM. :->
Very cool side note: in the 1,000 Free, Austin Newman set the WORLD Master's recored for the 1,000 in the 90-95 age group. He came at just over 20-minutes! He's 92. At 92, I just hope to be able to get in and out of the pool. Being able to swimming would be a bonus! To swim a 1,000 with a good time would be almost unthinkable.
Right out of the 1,000 cool-down it was back into the water for a 30-sec 50 Back as part of the Medley Relay. It was my first backstroke start since this time last year. At least I didn't flop it. Something must have stuck from all those years of swimming. Our relay fell a bit short, but until the results are published I won't know how my 50 stacked up.
Then it was the 200 Free. The first 100 felt great. I peaked at the clock and thought I saw a 1:03 (man, they have to post the results soon!). Then between 100 and 175 my body remembered that I'd just swam the 1,000. My arms felt like lead. Finished with a 2:17. Not great, but I think it should have been closer to 2:10.
The swim meet went down hill from there. The 100 IM about killed me: 1:13. Shameful. The 500 was bad: 6:23. Way slower than last year. Grrrrrrrrrrr. The pièce de résistance in this suck-a-thon was the final 50-Back. 32-Eat-me-seconds. 32! I've disappointed not only myself, but my country.
The moral of the story is that while I'm going to rock the IM swim at CDA, I clearly need to try and avoid trying to hanging with actual swimmers. It is too depressing.