Geeky Yet Waterproof

Waiting at PDX at 5:35am for my flight to Atlanta for USAS Convention 2008! I’ll be running the web design workshop again. Expect (possibly very random) updates soon.

Last Wednesday all our long hours of training payed off, as we took a van up to Federal Way for Senior Sectionals. The pool was actually being used in long course, because since it’s an Olympic year, people are trying to get their Olympic Trials cuts.
I had qualified in the just 200 fly only three days before, but at Sr. Sectionals everyone is given a bonus race in which they don’t need to have a qualifying time. So of course I chose the 100 fly for my extra race.

We kicked off our stay in Federal Way by going to the grocery store to get enough food to last us until Sunday. It was interesting to see what we all bought… from lasagna, to butter, to marshmallows.

Kyle and Hannah having too much fun at Safeway

For four days we lodged at the Extended Stay America hotel. Now let me warn you, lest you be tempted to stay at the same hotel: Extended Stay America has no maids. This makes for a terrible situation under the counter:

Nuclear waste

In addition, three rooms caught fire during the four days we were there — all of them in the hands of swimmers. Two were due to toast mishaps, one was on account of a bacon accident.

The trouble-causer

Perhaps it was the inhabitants’ fault for attempting to use the kitchenware. We went over to Sammi’s, Crystal’s, and Tori’s room one night for chicken spaghetti, and I ended up cooking the chicken — in the microwave.

Tori’s Kitchen

In any case, there is no explanation for the fact that in each kitchen, there were TWO plates, 2 forks, and II spoons — despite the THREE people that we had in each room.

But worst of all: there was no hot tub. That was the most offensive part of this hotel. However, it doesn’t mean we didn’t get our share of water for the weekend…

Even as we got in for warmups on Wednesday it was apparent that this meet was a heck of a lot faster than any other meet I had ever been to. Anywhere else, they make you slide slowly into the pool, even if it’s completely empty. Kids now days get hurt easily. We can’t risk any safety issues.
But not here. You could dive in, you could cannonball, you could run and jump. We’re big kids now. But the water was so cold, you definitely wouldn’t be sliding in slowly.

The Warmups

I swam my 200 fly on Thursday. I was told to just go out there and have fun, since we hadn’t trained long course meters in eight months. Even though this was the biggest meet I had ever been to, it was the most relaxing 200 fly I had ever done. I ended up dropping five seconds from my long course time, with a 2:19.96. I got a long course Sr. Sectional time, which is harder than in short course. I also came in 41st out of 51, which is a lot better than I was expecting.

On Friday I, along with almost everybody else on our team, time trialed the 50 free. I got 27.33, which was a second faster than my best time from last season.

Saturday was the 100 fly for me. I won my heat in lane 1 (even if it was only the second heat…), and I dropped two seconds, with a 1:01.60. I came within seven hundredths of the Sr. Sectional time, and I would have time trialed it after prelims that day… but trying to sign up for a time trial 30 minutes after the deadline, as we learned, doesn’t always work.

We all went to watch Finals each day, even though Tori was the only one that made it every time. Now let me mention: Finals was fast. The Olympian Megan Jendrick was there, and we watched her win the 200 breaststroke; she came within two seconds of the world record. And the winner of the 100 fly got a 54 for long course meters, which is four seconds off the world record. He was a 28 year-old Japanese guy who looked slightly like superman. (Anecdote: Kekoa and I got him to translate my Japanese shirt.)

Kohei Kawamoto, winner of the 100 fly

But there were even crazier people present. The 4th place finisher of the women’s 100 fly was 45 years old, possessing gray hair, glasses, and four kids. Likewise, the 4th place finisher of the men’s 200 fly was a 46 year-old who looks like he’s 70. Some people may age on the outside, but I guess their muscles don’t.

We all had a great time going to this meet. Traveling as a team is one part of the fun, and dealing with adversities (*ahem*, the hotel) is another. I also got to meet up with some people I met at Convention back in September whom I hadn’t seen for a long time; it was interesting to see how they swam, since I already knew how they handle four-hour meetings, 3am parties, and Disneyland.
These last four weeks have been crazy, mentally and physically, with me trying to get my Sr. Sectional time before the deadline. Although all the championship meets have been a lot of fun, and I’m sure I’ve gotten stronger, I’m glad to finally have a break.

Kekoa, April, Eamon: The Three Stooges from Convention 2007

Megan Jendrick

Our Guns N’ Roses cover band

Bearcats at Finals

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.

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

In the Statesman Journal.

Thanks goes to Eric for leaving me a phone message to let me know, otherwise I never would have found out.

On Tuesday we had our last high school meet before Districts, and it was against West. This was an interesting meet, partly because I swam the 200 IM and… 100 breaststroke. My 200 IM time wasn’t phenomenal, but I broke the school record by about 0.1 (with a 2:11.56).
My 100 breaststroke was also frighteningly close, because I won by 4 hundredths of a second — I got a 1:10.57, while 2nd place got 1:10.61.

We all decided that if our team would win the meet, we’d go out to Red Robin afterwards. As it turned out, West won. But we’re all winners at heart, so we went to Red Robin anyway!

And we saw the most awesome bird…

Last weekend we had a meet in Hillsboro… our last meet before State. This was possibly the smallest meet I’ve ever been to; our session was just for 15 and overs, so it ended up being smaller than a high school meet!
I’m not going to go into detail about all my races, but I will say that my main focus was the 200 fly. I’m desperately trying to get my Sr. Sectional time, which is a 2:01 — I had a 2:08.
As I had expected, the 200 fly turned out to be the most empty race; it consisted of Mac McDonald, Austin Ringquist (both from Hillsboro), and myself. I took 2nd, but I got a 2:07.30, which is a best time for me by a second. My first 100 split was 59.4, which is the fastest I’ve ever gone out in a 200 fly. Kate said if my first 100 had been half a second slower I might have been able to go a 2:05… oh well. I can’t wait till State!
For my own benefit, though I will allow you to watch it, here’s a video of my 200 fly (I’m in lane 2):

And check out Hillsboro’s outdoor long course warmup pool: you couldn’t see more than 5 feet above the water, but below you could see all 50 meters.

On Thursday we had a high school meet against Sprague, and beat them for possibly the first time (that I can remember). I swam the 200 IM and 100 fly, which was an epic race between myself and Emiliano. I could see we were trading off the lead at each wall, but at the end I got a 58.26 and he got 58.82. We both had been waiting for that race all season.
Afterwards some of us went out to dinner at Red Robin, where (surprise!) we also saw Sammi and some of her friends.
After a while, somebody joked that we should go bowling, but then somebody else said, “Sure!”. Well, Shawn had a car and a few empty seats, so while about four people went home, the rest of us extended the post-meet party a little longer at Firebird Lanes. This is how it was meant to be… don’t go to school, but party with the school kids at night.

Last thursday I took the bus with my high school swim team to Oregon City for a meet. I had forgotten how fun “charter bus meets” are… It’s like throwing a bunch of people with high metabolisms in a small room that moves for an hour and seeing what happens.
I swam the 200 IM, 400 free, and two relays. I got clobbered in the 200 IM by a club swimmer from Canby (Oregon City’s only club swimmer), but I sort of pwn3d in the 400. Unfortunately, I don’t know what any of my times meant because it was a short course meters pool.
The whole way back a few geeks and I were talking about Weird Al, Networking, and Leopard vs. Vista on a bus full of people. I’d like to mention that doing so takes guts. But nobody complained, so I guess it’s just more evidence that we geeks are taking over the world!