Geeky Yet Waterproof

I know what it looks like, but it’s NOT a one-hand touch!

This weekend was the short course State Championships for club swimming, in Mt. Hood. I was scheduled to swim the 50/100/200/500 free and the 100/200 fly, but that’s not exactly what I swam. I’ve been training almost all fly for the last three months in hopes of getting a Sr. Sectional time in the 100 or 200, so the freestyle was second-priority.

On Friday was the 100 fly and the 500 free. I dropped about .4 in my 100 fly, and made it into Finals with a 54.83. So to save myself from certain death in the afternoon, I scratched the 500 free. The 100 fly Sr. Sectional time was 54.09 — I needed to drop about 0.7 second.
Finals came, I swam, and I ended up with 54.43. So impossibly close. But I wasn’t about to leave that time sitting around for another year, so I decided to time trial the 100 fly the next day.

Saturday: the 50 free and the 100 fly time trial. I dropped some time in the 50 free, with a 23.67. It helped to dispel some tension, but I was still in the red zone of nervousness for the time trial.
An hour later, I swam my third 100 fly, and it took me 55.09 seconds to touch the wall — half a second slower than the previous day. Let this be a lesson that if one is to race seven 100 fly’s in four weeks, a best time won’t come from a time trial at the end.

On Sunday I woke up feeling confident for the 200 fly, despite the previous day’s disappointment. I had dreamed that night that I went a 2:02 in prelims, which somehow made me feel good even though I knew it wasn’t true.
But first I had to swim the 100 free. I got 51.52, which was a best time for me. A good omen. I also made it into Finals, but I scratched in order to focus on the fly.
When I stepped up to the blocks for the 200 fly, I felt strangely calm. I swam my race, and it felt easy and relaxed. I looked up at the clock, blinked, and looked again. 2:02? The fastest I had ever gone was 2:07! But it was for real. The Sr. Sectional time was 2:01, and I was sure I’d get it in Finals.
After prelims we went back to the hotel room and I tried to sleep, but I ended up lying awake for two hours. How would I sleep when the Moment of Truth was at hand?
A few hours later I found myself on the blocks at Finals. *Beep!* The race began, and it felt the same as that morning — easy, and relaxed. I was able to push a little harder on the last lap, because of the excitement of Finals. The Sr. Sectional time was so close! I touched the fateful wall in 4th place, and looked at the clock…

“Ford………………2:00.75″

The rest of that day was all celebration (at least for me). It’s funny my first Age Group Sectional time was in the 200 fly, and now my first Senior Sectional time was also in the 200 fly. And I got the cut six hours before the very last signup deadline. I don’t think I had ever been so relieved to have all that pressure off my back.

Normally we get Monday off after any meet, but this time I was told to come to practice… because we’re leaving for Sr. Sectionals Wednesday morning!
And I’m pumped to finally be able to wear a name cap, which Kate threw at me after my race.

This year’s high school swim season ended with a bang on Friday, with the conclusion of the State meet in Mt. Hood.
The adventure started not when we arrived at the pool, but on the bus ride there. You see, North Salem High School has a fleet of small white busses, all of them unreasonably old. And we took the oldest one. Yes, it took our assistant coach Kyla five tries to get the engine started. Then came the freeway part… it took us 10 minutes to reach 65mph. But after a while, as if the bus had heard us saying, “All we need is the engine and at least three wheels!”, it started billowing out smoke — from the inside. Apparently the heater, which was positioned directly in front of Jerelle, overheated. So from that point on our jackets heated us, not the heater.

To everyone’s relief (adding to that which resulted from our successful arrival), the meet took place in Mt. Hood’s outdoor 50-meter pool, rather than the crappy indoor 25-yard one. So how did they deal with February temperatures? They basically turned it into an alien spacecraft. The whole pool was enclosed in a huge rubber bubble, like being inside a hot air balloon. To get inside, you had to either enter through a revolving door, or through the airlock: a garage door opening into a room with another garage door leading to the pool, which was not to be opened until the first garage door is closed. This was possibly the coolest natatorium I had ever seen (let alone for high school…).

But as if to say “our coolness doesn’t end there!”, the scoreboard doubled as a huge tv screen hooked up to various underwater cameras, showing realtime video of each race.

Although this was still just a high school meet, it was actually faster even than club State. In club swimming, there are bigger meets that come after State, so a lot of people skip State to get ready for the bigger meets.
But in high school… State is everything. The end of the meet is the end of the season, and everybody shows up. So it was with minor dismay that I looked at my 100 fly seeding, only to discover that I was seeded 2nd to last (17th), with the fastest time being six seconds faster than mine.

But my less-than-grandiose placement seemed to have a positive effect. Somehow I don’t get as nervous when everyone’s faster than me, than when I’m seeded in 1st.
I ended up getting a 55.04 in my 100 fly, four tenths of a second faster than the weekend before. I also moved up five places, from 17th to 12th, and just barely made it into the consols (which were, as you might have guessed, top 12).

Our 200 and 400 freestyle relays were slightly slower than the previous week, but that didn’t really matter — we were all eight of us (four relay members and four alternates) just happy to be there. And even though we added three seconds in our 400 relay, it was still a Sr. Sectional time!

The next day, our team had twice as many coaches as swimmers. Um, make “swimmers” singular. Since our relays didn’t make it back, I was the only one from North who was there. But since it was all the same people at the club meets, I knew at least one person from just about each team — including the officials!

The fact that we didn’t taper for high school State started to show through in my second 100 fly. I was just worn out from the previous week of training, and I added .92 in my race. My first 50 was exactly the same split as the day before, down to the hundredth of a second; but after that, it just went downhill. By the time I finished, it felt like I had just sprinted a 200 fly.
Even though I added time though, I was just happy to have made it in to the second day. I took 12th overall, which I think is pretty good considering the fastest time was a 49.

Thus ended this high school season. It was even more fun than last year, and it led me to two extracurricular achievements: 1) the vast improvement(?) of my bowling, and 2) the memorization of the Red Robin menu.

In a week and a half will be club State, and a week or two after that is Sectionals. Then, finally, The Break.