My Bad Bad Swim Day At Ocala Masters 05/20/2012

It's official, I suck at swimming!  Every time I swim I swim slower!  More so today then ever before.  Mind you I have a million real and another million made up excuses.  Let's see from out of shape, to not swimming enough and then too much wine last night and it all equals a bad day in the pool. 

Woke up at 6 to walk dog then ate a big breakfast.  About 8:30 I arrived at the local pool to warm up a bit.  It's a SCY pool:

Warm Up
200 free
100 kick
6x50's pull
2x100 IM
50 fly
25 easy
25 off blocks

900 total SCY

I didn't really get in the water to about 8:40.  No one was at the pool so I took my time getting in.  Walking down the stairs like I was at a hotel pool.  Then a few of us got together and left at 9:30 to head to Ocala.  The Ocala pool is a LCM pool, yeah!
It's not a bad pool but not a great pool.  But they do have new locker rooms!  So nice!  I warmed up a bit more.  About 400 LCM.  I should have swam more, I know.  I also should have warmed up and down in between events. The best part of this meet is that it starts at 11am and finished at 2pm!

I so wasn't ready for my first event the 200 IM.  For this meet I entered knowing that I've been out of the water.  I picked a few events I've never done before including the 200 IM.  Wanted to get a time for the hell of it.  Even being my one and only time that is one damn slow time.  Let's just say I should have swam the 100 fly and 200 fly today.  My 50 fly in the 200 IM felt horrible.  I was stiff and just didn't get any movement.  I didn't feel my pull at all and never mind my kick.  I felt better for the last 10 meters.  My backstroke wasn't much better.  In face I was brushing the left lane line for the last 25 meters.  Ouchie!  Now breaststroke wasn't so bad.  WTF?  My weak stroke if you can call my breaststroke a stroke at all.  Now I looked up at the last 5 meteres and noticed a ref had his hand raised.  I so thought I did something to earn a DQ!  But I still poured it on a bit for the free.  When I finished I looked up and saw two officials.  Fuck!  Turns out I wasn't DQ'ed but they wanted to ask me if I'd be okay swimming with the women for the 400 IM since I was the only male.  I said yes!  The guy two lanes over got DQ'ed.  He didn't touch with both hands in his fly.  Phew!  In the picture above is Ellen Brown who is 87 years old.  She is my hero!  She swims and swims and swims!

Next up the 50 back.  Now I've swum this event once before.  Last year at this meet and did a 35.45.  Not great but it's a time.  So I just wanted to swim that time again.  This year we started at the end of the pool without the time pads.  So it was feet on wall.  I was so nervouse I'd slip down in my start.  Kinda didn't get a good start.  But did a 35.40  Hey that's faster.  Not by much but still.  I'm old and out of shape.

Now I started to feel a cramp in my left leg.  Really really bad.  It was right before the 400 IM so I went and scratched.  Figured I didn't want to push it.  I had the 400 Free and figured if my leg acted up I could just pull myself.  So no 400 IM!

Then came the horrible 400 free.  My leg was still cramping and I tried to mask it with some biofreezze which really didn't do much.  I just swam the 400 but it was horrible.  Really bad.  My turns were the best ever in a distance event for me.  They weren't perfect but for me I was impressed.  I just didn't have anything in the tank.  Really tried to pull myself towards the end.  For some reason the website doesn't have my splits.  In fact it's odd cuz' my time is dead on.
5:10.0!  Which is 9 seconds slower then last year.  9 F'in seconds.  Holy Crap I'm slow!  Damn!  Damn!  I wish the had consolidated the heats differently.  I was swimming with the slower girls and guys.  The previous heat had two fast girls who did a 5:01.  Maybe that would have pushed me to go faster.  Oh well!  I finished!  Something to build on.  
So overall if I was to grade my day I'd give myself a D-.  Should be an F but the 50 Back wasn't a disaster.  I got to July 14th to improve.  I'm either going down to St Petes or Ocala for a LCM meet on the 14th.  On the positive side I did see some nice eye candy for a change of pace.  Oh and swimming today helped push my Go The Distance a bit... I'll be back in the water Tuesday.  Tomorrow I have my long day at work!  Hopefully the sunburn on my back won't hurt too much tomorrow!