Two races done in 2 weeks and I’m still in my base training phase. Not bad! This weekend we had the Swim Wales Open Masters Age Group Championships (I think that’s the full title); my first solely swimming race of any kind since primary school! I entered the 1500m and ended up in the same heat as Mike and Helen from Cardiff Triathletes. I was swimming for Swansea Masters and Mike for Cardiff Masters, and we had similar seed times. Race on!
A swim meet is an interesting thing to do, with most people swimming a number of different events and 5 year age group categories ranging easily through to 70 year olds. You get to do a lot of lounging around waiting for events and I was very glad of Emma Smithurst’s company (the Swansea Masters coach). Chatting kept the nerves away and having her there made sure I wasn’t missing anything.
A couple of warm ups at the session start and then shortly before my race let me check my double-hat-with-goggles-in-between hopes of keeping my goggles on after the diving start. Everything was moving well and the water felt good.
At race start I had Mike 2 lanes away from me. A good diving start (I think?), a bit of dolphining and I started a bit hard but eased off to planned effort (“feeling nice” for the first 500). The guy next to me started a little faster than me, as I think did Mike but I kept to my effort, and after 500m had pulled them back and then some. From 500m to 1000m I raised the effort a little but held back. This phase hurts a bit, but I was having fun and could keep tabs on Mike at each turn. Was I going too slow? Was I pulling him along? Is he working hard to stay with me? Will he be able to lift it for the last 500?
With 500m to go I lifted my effort (and the pace according to my coach’s splits) and Mike didn’t stay with it. It was a really tough final 10 lengths but it felt good in a not good it hurts but its going good kind of way. I beat both targets, finishing in 2:25.92 so that made me smile. I’m at that tipping threshold of being able to hold 1:30/100m for a long distance event, and just starting to break through it. My swimming development has been on a plateau for a while and after a lot of hard work (and with plenty more metres in the pool to come) I feel like I’m starting to break through it.
From my first swim meet I found that it’s a bit of a strange thing, with a wide range of people and a wide range of abilities, and that it’s all a lot of fun. I’d strongly recommend it.