Westport Swim Meet 2-2-2014

I drove down to the swim meet with my friend Paul. I have known him through swimming at Cornerstone and at open water swims for many years. We got there fifteen minutes before the open warm up ended. i got to take a practice drive off the blocks. I almost immediately decided i would not attempt a flip turn on the 50. Being in a new pool, it was just too odd and unfamiliar. I felt I would muff it. The race when it came, it went to quick, it is hard for me to recap. I felt i had a good dive and swam fast, but when I came to the wall, I grapped to ruen, but there was no grab spot, so I sort of slipped and had a weak pushoff. I sawm as hard as I could, and finished second in my heat. But as it tuned out the guy who won was heat was 49 so in a different age group. When the results came out, I was 1 out of 7 in the 55-59 men with a time of 31:00. I was happy with the time. I just wanted to get in under 32. I feel that with a flip turn, I can get under 30, which would be a big accomplishment. It was fun watching some of the really fast swimmers and their flip turns. They came off the turns like olympic bobsledders. i wanted to be able to do that! The only other race I did was the 100 IM. You could swim in up to 5 events, but I wanted to be fully fresh. The 100 IM also went quick. I dove in, swam underwater halfway, came up, did the butterfly taking breaths every three strokes, hit the wall (I found the grap spot, it was low at the water line, flipped onto my back, did the butterfly, hard and steady, did a flip onto my front, stroke and flip turn into breasttroke, which went well in that I didn't muff it, but I went sort of deep, and hard to rise up to the surface vertically to get a breath. The berats stroke, went okay, and then I sawm hard on the free. I came in at 1:25:25 or so, which was way better than I had hoped. i had done 1:33 in practice and just wanted to break 1:30. Paul was also in the race -- we have a friendly competition, but he started in the water rather than diving and he had already swum three events, so he was tired. I left the meet, very excited and anxious to get back in the pool. My next meet will likely be in May in New Britain, where I hope to swim, the 50 Free, the 100 Im, and the 100 free. The events are spaced out enough that I think I can do all three reasonable well. But first, I must master the flip turn. Resuts