another masters swim meet

Its March 1st. I am always thankful February is a short month because I always think March means spring and warm weather. WRONG! This morning I was driving south to Louisville at 7am for a swim meet. The temperature was 21, and the wind was blowing 20-30mph. That is CRAZY! At one point on the boring drive down I65, I could see off in the distance a large flock of geese flying from the southeast to the northwest. They seemed to be a couple miles away from me. And as I continued the drive, the stream of geese did not stop. When I got to where they were crossing the interstate, I looked off to the right, and as far as I could see there were flocks of geese flying in formation. Then I looked left, same thing! I drove under the geese migration super highway! That was so cool!

So, I got to the pool 30 minutes early (I must have driven a tad fast, because I gave myself the time googlemaps told me, and oops - it wasn't that long!). The doors at the pool were still locked so I hung out in the McDonalds across the street, killing time, eating a plain biscuit. Wishing I had brought a book, or magazine, or laptop, instead I sat there and read the back of the tray cover, which had the nutritional content of much of their menu. ICK! I'm glad I don't eat there but once or twice a year. If you haven't seen the movie Supersize me, that will surely make you give up fast food. Of course, I'm sure most people reading this never cross the threshold of fast food restaraunts.

Anyways, on to the meet. The Louisville pool is nice. Unusual for a 50 meter pool. The diving towers are actually in the 50 m pool, not separate. So the deep end of the swim lanes is super deep. I think it would be really weird to swim a 50m meet there and look so far down at the lane line on the bottom of the pool and try to judge the walls. In this case, we were still 25yards - the only respectable distance to swim in in a pool! Yes - more turns are better! Enough from you open water triathletes who are scoffing at me because you just want one mile long pool. ;-) Turns are fun! ANd they make you swim faster! That's not to say I don't love open water swimming, because I do. But if I'm in a pool, I only want to swim 25yards.

So, the meet goes on. I pick my 3 favorite races to swim. 100 back. 100 fly. 200im. The seed times for everyone else, showed me I would be swimming alone and I'd have to come up with my own motivation to swim fast. Last night I watched the womens BigTen conference meet on tv. I watched some super fast swimming. Swimming is my favorite sport to watch. And those girls kicked ass. Kate Zubkova, a Ukrainian student at IU, Olympian, top rankings in NCAA backstroke events, swam 100back, 200 back, 100fly. This girl knows how to swim. She has some awesome underwater swimming, and beautiful strokes. I aspire to those underwaters. But what was most amazing was her demeanor just before she hopped into the water to race. Smiles, giggles, waves to her friends, and to the camera. I thought, 'that is a girl with some big talent. And she has put in a lot of hard work. And she believes in her talent, her hard work, and what her coaches have planned for her to do'. And with that belief you have no worries. You just race, and it all just happens. That's how I wanted to feel. I know I don't have her talent, but I have some swim talent. ANd I know I haven't worked like she has, but I have put in a lot of work over the years, and I believe I can swim fast (for the 42 year old me). SO I chatted with people, smiled, and relaxed. Hopped in the pool for the 100back, told myself to swim relaxed the first 50, then bury myself. Its just one minute of racing, just suffer. ANd I had a great start, swam super straight (no small feat for me in backstroke in an unfamiliar pool), and hit every turn right on, had good underwaters, and broke the 1:04 I wanted to dip under. While not a post college PR, it is a PR for the 42 year old Cheryl. Next up was the 100fly. No women entered, so I got to swim with all men. And none of the young fast guys were entered, and I was actually the fastest seed by many seconds. Again, more self motivation required. I raced smarter than last meet, knocked off half a second, didn't feel like a piano was on my back the last 10 yards. I thought for sure I had the 1:03 in this one too, but nope, 1:04.5. ok, not bad. I'll take it. Last race was 200IM (the race where I lost the goggles last meet). I felt great the whole race, smooth, and strong, was way ahead again, and racing myself, yelling things in my brain as I raced (easy on the fly, don't screw up that wall, don't overkick the backstroke, but kick well off the wall, breaststroke quick narrow pull, finish kick , no, not like that, finish it all the way, come on you know how to do it, now do it! ok, I'm trying, the legs just don't always want to cooperate with the brain! ok, free now, get off the wall you slowpoke, kick those sprinter legs like you know how to kick, you are an evenrude motor, and don't you stop until you hit that wall'. And then 2:23 later it was over. Knocked a few seconds off last meet, which was a relief after that fiasco.

I'm a little sad that I don't really have any more meets that are on my schedule for the SCY season. (Maybe I'll be able to find one to squeeze in without messing up the rest of the training schedule.) We'll see. In the meantime, I've been thinking I need a couple more splish suits to give me more in the suit rotation to get me through the spring with the best looking set of suits in Bloomington. I can't let my fans down!

The biggest letdown of the day was when I stopped at OMalia's to buy a pint of Graeters chocolate chocolate chip ice cream, and their 3 shelves that held the new stock of Graeters were completely empty!