First meet of 2016

[CoachBobM]

Last weekend, I was in my first swim meet of 2016! I had originally planned to do 3 events, but due to a schedule conflict had to arrive too late to do the first one. So I only did 2 events: 100y backstroke and 100y butterfly.

100y backstroke is an event I've been trying unsuccessfully to do a personal best in for about a year. Unfortunately, I still didn't succeed. In the past, I've had a problem doing backstroke at the pool where the meet was held because, to me, it feels like the flags are farther from the wall on the side where the starting blocks are than they are at the other end of the pool. I'm not sure whether the difference is real or whether it's an optical illusion, but even though I was aware of the problem and tried to compensate, I still ended up rolling onto my breast too far from the wall to get a good kickoff on my turn. But I don't think that was my only problem. I think my pacing was also off. I'd tried swimming both events the previous day, but felt like I had overpaced the 100y backstroke, so I may have ended up underpacing it at the meet in reaction to that. My conclusion was that I need to experiment a lot more with varying my pacing in practice so that I'm confident at the meet that I'm pacing it properly.

Although I had been doing 100y butterfly in practice for a couple of years, this was the first time I had actually done the event in competition. When I'm swimming an event in competition for the first time, my goal is just to prove to myself that I can complete it legally. Also, I was the only one in my age group who was swimming the event, so I was insured a first place finish as long as I completed it legally. I was fairly happy with my pacing of the heat. I was the only person at the meet who actually swam the second 50 faster than the first. And now, I'm actually thinking about trying 200y butterfly in practice!


Bob