This weekend we had our second meet of the season, in Newburg. I swam the 200 IM and 1000 free on Friday, and the 200 free, 100 back, 50 free, and 200 fly on Sunday.
We didn’t have any relays on Sunday, because the only Bearcats there were Amanda, Allison, and I. Oh, and Allison wasn’t swimming.
200 IM: This was a fun race, because my heat consisted of Tori, Kyle, Adam, myself, and one person from a different team. I finished with 2:11 (which is a one-second improvement), and I think we all took 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th.
1000 free: Kate gave me an easy strategy for this: go out at some speed, and stay at that speed! So I held 1:06’s for the first 700, and after that it was 1:05, 1:04, 1:03. I ended up getting 10:53, which was a 16-second drop from last year. I’m satisfied.
200 free: I came in 2nd in this race, with a 1:56. The guy I was racing was ahead of me for the first 125 yards — then I pulled ahead by about an arm’s-length, and kept my lead until the last 25, where he out-touched me by about half a second!
100 back: I didn’t even know I was swimming this event until about an hour before. But I ended up getting 2nd, with a 1:02 — right on my best time.
50 free: I don’t remember what time I got in this, but I think it was about .1 faster than last week — 24.something. My best time is 23.89, which I haven’t been able to break since I got it back in December at Husky.
200 fly: I had 5 minutes to rest in between the 50 free and 200 fly. But I think I did alright considering the situation — Al told me to be within five seconds of my best time (which is 2:08). I got 2:13.39, which is 4.5 seconds off my best. I also took 1st, since the next tallest person in my heat was about 5′0″…
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Off topic news: here is another specimen from our team photos last week…
We did our BRSC team photos last night, for the first time in almost exactly two years. We had a professional photographer and it took about an hour and a half, but only about the last 15 minutes were the actual team photos; they decided to do all the individual photos first, which took about an hour or so. BUT, we weren’t sitting around doing nothing for that hour, because a lot of people brought their own cameras, which we used most vigorously. So we actually took more of our own team photos than the photographer did.
I’ve demanded that everyone email their photos to me with the excuse that I’ll post them on the Bearcat site, so you should see them here in a few days. In the mean time, here’s a (rather bad) cell phone picture of what we were doing…
Left to right: Iza, Michelle, Raymond, Adam, Andrew, Kyle, Eamon. Notice how Kyle decided to be Frankenstein and I somehow turned into a werewolf. It must be just that Halloween spirit…
This weekend we had our first meet of the season, in Springfield. I swam the 500, 200 free, 50 free, and 50 fly (that’s right — 50 fly).
In the 500 I got 5:15, which is about 12 seconds off my best. However, I think that’s pretty good considering we had already done 5×500’s that morning.
But then there was the Counting Situation: at the end of the pool is another smaller pool, with about six inches of wall in between the two pools. Normally there’s a plastic floating dock in the smaller pool so the counters don’t have to get wet (or exercise their balancing skills). This time, not so. On each side of the six-inch-wide wall was a rectangular ocean which, to those wearing clothes, was unjustly wet. So the counters had to either try to balance on the wall, or hang on the wall and float in the smaller pool. Like so:
My other races also went well, but there was nothing interesting about them to post here. However, for my own records, these were my times:
Sorry, couldn’t resist. I’m not actually burned; I’ve just been very busy for the last week because I took a PSAT and had to study, and because I’ve been putting the final touches on a, *ahem* certain alarm clock app which will be released within the next two months and has certain secret features which I will not reveal here *cough*.
Anyway, for swimming news, we have our first meet of the season this weekend, in Springfield. I’m only swimming the 500 tonight, but we’ve already done five of those this morning. Yes, we had practice. I’m thinking I’ll be swimming it for fun tonight, not for records.
More swimming news: we found worms in the showers. Questions, complaints, outrage, contact the janitor.
Last weekend we were staying in Port Townsend, Washington, and we just happened to be there in time to witness the Port Townsend Kinetic Sculpture Race. If you think you’ve seen insane forward-moving vehicles driven by stoned hippies, you ain’t seen nothin’….
This post is far overdue, because I’m been playi — UM, busy — but anyway, on Tuesday, MY 16GB IPOD TOUCH ARRIVED. Regarding its awesomeness, power, and WiFi-enablery, words fail me. Rather than writing 1000 words (when am I going to stop saying that?), I’ll use photos.
On Monday, I reached the zenith of being 16: that’s right, I got my license.
But we ran into a few obstacles on the way. The first thing was that before we left for the DMV, the car was already almost out of gas. So we left several minutes early in order to remedy that.
But then, on our way there, we just happened to look through the insurance cards in the car to make sure we had the latest one. 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006… Uh oh. So we called my dad to ask if the latest one was at home: nope, the payments had been late, so we didn’t have the card yet. But, we did have the registration information for the insurance, which was better than nothing. So we turned around, went home to get the registration info, and attempted once more to get to the DMV. So much for leaving early to get gas.
But that wasn’t the end of it. When we got there, just on time, it turned out the tags on the license plate were…. expired! So there was just one thing to do: hope my examiner didn’t examine the car too hard…
Examiner: “Your tags are expired.”
Me: *silence*
Examiner: “Alright! Let’s get started.”
The test took about seven minutes, and two blocks. I really don’t see how it would be possible to fail.
On Saturday night was the main part of Convention: the banquet. Rowdy Gaines, three-time Olympic Gold Medalist in 1984 (and my coach’s coach), was the MC. They basically played a promotional video of each of the five divisions of US Aquatic Sports (Synchro Swimming USA, USA Diving, US Masters Swimming, USA Water Polo, and USA Swimming), and then had the president of each come up and speak, sometimes calling up some world-ranked athletes of that sport to receive an award. We watched Michael Phelps get awarded Swimmer of the Year. Unfortunately, “his coach wouldn’t let him come”, so we didn’t actually get to see him.
But that all wasn’t the highlight of the banquet: they were playing ancient videos of Adolf Kiefer, Olympic Gold Medalist in 1936, inventor of the modern backstroke, and
seller of kickboards. Then, to my surprise (assuming he had passed away years ago), he appeared in a wheelchair onstage!
Adolf Kiefer
Team Oregon: April, Mailene, Eamon, Chris (Thompson), Trent, Tyler, Logan, Zach
After the banquet, all the athletes had a party to celebrate the end of Convention. But then at about 10:30pm, I remembered somewhat late that we were flying back early the next morning. I called Judy (my chaperone) and asked what time we had to be in the lobby the next day: 5:45am. But then she mentioned that usually none of the athletes go to bed on the last night. I liked that idea, and since it would be a short night anyway (having to be downstairs at 5:45), I decided this was a good time to try staying up.
So after the partying had settled down a little, we all went upstairs and played Stupid Games in the hall on the 2nd floor. We started out with about 30-40 people, but every hour or so, a few more people would give up and head to bed.
This was a card game.
At about 2:30am, the head security guard walked in on our gathering and we all fell silent. Then, to our utter surprise:
“Do you guys need want some drinks or fruit or something?”
The big plate of fruit helped us to stay awake for the remaining hours of our nocturnal (matinal?) odyssey.
By about 5am, we had four people left, and we decided to call it a night (or morning… whatever).
But when I went back to my room to pack, there was an obstacle.
You see, my roommate hadn’t actually been staying in our hotel room all week, since he lived just 20 minutes away (why was he using a hotel room anyway?). Well, that changed on the last night. I went in to start packing, but I couldn’t turn on the lights because he was sleeping! Apple saves the day: I used my iPod as a flashlight.
I met a lot of people at Convention from all over the country (Hawaii, Oregon!, California, Texas, Ohio, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey), including some Olympians and National/World record holders. That’s why I started using Facebook this week, because otherwise there’s no way I’d remember everyone…
I’m really looking forward to next year, which will be in ATLANTA!
