Geeky Yet Waterproof

This weekend was the high school District swim meet — the meet I’ve been waiting for since this time last year. I swam in two freestyle relays, the 100 fly, and as I feared, the 100 breaststroke (which turned out to be not so bad).
The meet lasted two days, with prelims on the first day and finals on the second day.
Since I was too lazy to attempt an entry on Friday, I’m going to split this post into two parts:

FRIDAY: PRELIMS

Our team took a school bus to Corvallis, where the meet took place. But because of some kind of “crisis”, we were forced to leave for Corvallis early and have a pizza party before the meet!
But fortunately the pizza didn’t soften our minds and dull our senses as we had expected it would…

My first race was the 100 fly. I was matched up against Andrew, who in our identical race last year set the District record of 55.72. My goal was to break his old record, and in the process pass through North’s record of 56.1, simply because of the fact that it was set in 1975.
Exactly 55.43 seconds after the beep, I was able to enjoy the feeling of holding the new District record. It’s somehow a lot more fun to know everyone I’m racing, rather than being surrounded by seven people from seven different parts of the country whom I’ve never seen before, nor will I ever see again except in videos I post on YouTube…

Next came the 200 freestyle relay, which consisted of Gerrit, Emiliano, myself, and Artem. As if the day hadn’t already started out awesomely, we not only beat out all the other teams but set a new District record, with 1:34.37!

Shortly after that was the 100 breaststroke. All I wanted for this race was to have fun (and maybe to remember what breaststroke felt like…), which is what I did. I got a 1:08.46, and I somehow made it into the finals. It’s interesting how (for me) breaststroke just plain sucks in practice, but it’s fun in a meet!

The last event was the 400 freestyle relay. This was the most exciting race of the day: we were in 2nd place for the first 300, with Redmond about three seconds ahead. Then in the last leg, I just barely pulled ahead of Redmond’s anchor and we won by a second. I had never heard people screaming so loudly for a swim meet.
When we slowed down our adrenaline ventilations long enough to go talk to Jodi, we discovered that we had set another District record, and on top of that our time of 3:30.74 was a Sr. Sectional cut by two seconds!

After the meet some of us from North went bowling to celebrate our victories. Where after my third gutter ball came rolling back to me, we discovered that simply being a good swimmer doesn’t make you as successful in other things…

SATURDAY: FINALS

The second day of the meet proved just as adrenaline-filled as the first, with the addition of podiums. An awards ceremony after every four events kept the excitement running high, and some great newspaper coverage from the day before made us hungry for more.

I started out with the 100 fly: I wasn’t expecting to go much faster than in prelims, which had already been a best time for me by a second and half. I ended up going 16 hundredths slower, but I still held my record from the previous day and took 1st.

In our 200 free relay we were .08 slower than in prelims and we lost to McNary, but we still took Silver with 1:34.37.

My 100 breaststroke was also .15 slower than prelims, but I ended up 6th in the Finals. Hey, for a stroke I never train for, I think that’s alright!

Our 400 free relay was again the last race of the day, and the one most anticipated. Redmond smashed everyone, but we took 2nd with 3:29.24 — a second and a half faster than our prelims time, and three seconds under the Sr. Sectional time! (Too bad there is no Sr. Sectionals for high school…) All of us got best times for our 100 splits, and mine was a 50.8.

This was probably my most successful swimming weekend ever, and I can’t tell you how pumped I am for State this Thursday. Although only the winner each event automatically goes to State, both our relays (which took Silver) got a wildcard time and made it in anyway. So, we’ll be doing it all over again in two days!

Victory!

Myself the next day