Swim, Swam, Swum: Update From My First Meet

I am home from my little weekend adventure with updates to share.
 
Well, my first swim meet in twenty years was successful. And by that, I mean, I survived it (ha ha). We drove up to Las Vegas early Saturday morning, to allow plenty of time in case of bad weather (we did hit snow two times), which got us there early enough to check into the Hard Rock Hotel and grab a delicious little vegan lunch before checking in for the meet. Warm-up was at noon and I was one of the first swimmers in the pool. I was quite nervous once I walked inside the complex and needed to calm my nerves a bit and stretch out in the water. I felt good once I started and it helped me to feel a little more at ease to learn the walls, dive off the blocks, and get to know the pool better.
 
My first individual event was also the first event of the meet, the 500 freestyle. Oh man, what did I do starting out with such a long one? This baby is 20 laps and while I am accustomed to swimming 150 laps in my daily practices, it's not at "race" speed, per se, so it took me a bit to settle into the right pace and find my comfort zone.
 
I should say that US Masters Swimming is a whole new experience when it comes to the way that seasonal meets are swum. In that, I mean that the events are deck-seeded, slowest to fastest by entered time; ages and genders combined. And THAT means that as a 39 year-old woman, I can be swimming next to a 47 year-old woman, or a 22 year-old man, depending on what their entered time is. So winning (or not winning) your heat, doesn't necessarily let you know where you placed in your own age group, until all of the heats are swum and the times are collected. In most instances, the other women in my age group (35-39) most likely swam in totally different heats than I did and they only compare our times once all the heats have swam.

It was quite a funky thing to get used to. I mean, it doesn't really matter...it's just that when I was younger, I always swam in heats next to other girls and always within my age-group. So that was lesson number one.
 
With that said, I survived the 500 freestyle and surprisingly, my time qualified me to participate in the US Masters Nationals competition, which will be taking place in Atlanta, Georgia, in late May. So that was cool and unexpected, though I did quickly learn that I might not want to always swim this baby, because man, it exhausted me in terms of retaining energy for my next event, the 100 Individual Medley (which is one lap of each stroke: butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke, freestyle).
 
Next up following the I.M. was a fun event, the 50 freestyle. I never focused on this event much as a youngster, usually opting for longer events back then; but I think I rather like the shorties nowadays (ha ha). Here is a video of that swim. As you can see, I was the only girl in my heat this time around. I worked hard to keep up with those speedy boys.

And last up was the 100 freestyle, which I ended up getting first place in my age group in. Of all of my swims, I felt like this was my best paced and best raced, and I am rather looking forward to giving it another go at the next meet I can swim it at.
 
Video of the 100 freestyle:

Though it seems like I started this swimming adventure a long time ago, last night I realized by looking back at my blog, that I dove in and completed my very first attempt at a swim practice on November 30, 2009. It is now less than two months later and I have given the ol' meet-thing a whirl, so seeing that I am still somewhat "new" to this water ball game again, I feel pleased with the point I am at.

I was a little frustrated directly after the meet, simply because I remember back to how easy it was to blaze through swims in my youth and produce lickedy-split times without even thinking about it. But stepping back and looking at the bigger picture, realizing that I have only had two months in the water, I know that I need to give myself a lot more time, patience, and training to see real results.
 
If anything, this first taste of competition gave me incentive to keep putting in the time to build up my stamina, work on my strokes, learn to sprint again, and keep on preparing for the meets ahead of me. The initial anxiety of knowing how the whole meet scenario worked is now behind me and getting a glimpse of the friendly scene at a US Masters event and meeting other swimmers my age was really fantastic. An added bonus was running into my friend, Mark, who I grew up swimming with at RAA (Riverside Aquatics Association) from age seven, up until we left for college. He was so kind and generous to our family and really helped me to learn the ropes and feel at ease. Mark now lives in Las Vegas with his wife and has been swimming competitively in Masters Swimming for ten years. He killed his events, winning every single one of them, and sure was fun to watch. Here is a photo of us:

My amazing family was a HUGE support to me and cheered me on in every race. I'm so lucky to have had them by my side and be able to feel their encouragement and energy. It is so comforting to know that no matter how my races went, that they are waiting there with huge smiles and lots of love.

To top off our fun little weekend, we drove back from Vegas on Sunday morning, caught up on some work, did some laundry, and then headed down to the House of Blues to catch one of our favorite bands, Anti-Flag, play an AMAZING, kick-ass show. Here's a photo of Chris #2 and the boys ripping it up. More about the Anti-Flag gig (with a rad video of their last song of the night) tomorrow.

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