I'm trying...

What a great job I have! Today I accompanied a student from my school to the Regional High School swimming qualifiers. The top five swimmers from each event qualify for the Provincial championships in two weeks. Anyway, he swims in a club but because this is a high school championship he cannot be coached by his regular coach. Some ritzy schools have pools and coaches so they are at an advantage. Anyway, this student is only 13 years old and today he competed against boys 4-5 years older, and he made the top five! He's got a promising career ahead of him.

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago he asked me to be his sponsor teacher/coach and though I had never done anything like this before I agreed. And today, it was so funny to hear him call me coach in front of his friends from other clubs. Like I was his own private coach. Too funny. But he was so grateful and thanked me so nicely afterward. Now he wants me to accompany him to the provincials. It's in another city, so the school will have to pay for me to go. I don't know if they'll agree to that. We'll see.

And...the biggest exciting news is that Brent Hayden, former world record holder in the 100 Free and fastest in the event this year (without the cheat suits) is coming to our school on November 9th to give a talk! I won't be able to sleep the night before! He's my student's hero as well.

...
Did I tell you I'm EXCITED?

I'm EXCITED!

I never get EXCITED!

Well, almost never.

Swimmers take good care of their feet and fashion is so important! Here are just a few feet and their stories. Apologies to those I forgot to photograph!

Linda's feet. She smashed five Canadian records this competition. What an inspiration. She has overcome great adversity, injury and illness in the past few years but is in top form once again. Honestly, her freestyle is so beautiful to watch, so smooth and strong, efficient. And of course, fast. When she's swimming, everyone in the stands watches her. She's a former Commonwealth swimmer and she's only 72.

Dave is man enough to wear pink. Dave was the one that got me into Masters swimming. Years ago I was at a teacher's conference. Dave was in front of me in the coffee line. He turned around and asked me if I swam and why not come out and join the team! I did, and for the first two weeks I hated it.

Dave is a crazy man. Fearless. He swims as many long distance swims in a meet as he can. (1500, 800 and 400 Free, 400 IM, 200 Fly) I used to do that too and I might just do it again. Thanks Dave.

Rosemary. She's my competition. She's the top woman in our age group in Canada. She swam with the UBC Dolphins as a student and just returned to swimming a few years ago. She is always in the same races as me so I never get to watch her technique. Yesterday I asked her about her training schedule. It's pretty intense, five or six days a week. And she's a doctor and mother of twins. She is one of the nicest, most humble people I have ever met. She told me she gets so nervous and feels ill before her races. She often wonders why she has decided to race again, but after she does, she knows why.

Mike. He just joined masters two years ago. In that time he has lost 60 pounds! He has an awesome breaststroke, much faster than me! (that's not difficult) I can tell he has the swimming bug and is a lifer now.
Me and Shelley. Shelley's the one who has kept me swimming and going to these meets. In fact we both went to our very first meet together. It was the BC provincials and we had never competed before! I remember Shelley being so nervous the first night that she didn't sleep a wink. In the morning she was supposed to swim the 1500 Freestyle but she was so tired that she just groaned from the comfort of her bed, "I'm not getting up. Seriously Sandy, I'm not doing it. I haven't slept a wink. Forget it." But then I showed her a fax that one of our teammates sent from home wishing us good luck. I remember her saying, "Damn you Jim." But she got out of bed and swam her best time ever!

Sitting around waiting for our races. There was a lot of down time at this meet. 600 swimmers. From top, clockwise:
Steve. He only started swimming a couple of years ago as well. He's getting fast and super competitive. He's hooked, already planning his next swims. Another lifer I can tell.
Mike.
Carl: Carl was our coach a few years ago and swam with us occasionally. Unlike the rest of us (except Linda) he swam competitively as a kid. This year he pushed up his training for the 200 fly. His best time was six seconds off the Canadian record. So, for the past 8 months Carl has abstained from junk food and alcohol. On Sunday Carl swam the 100 fly and did a best time. Sunday, Carl was a hairy man. Monday, he was smooth and totally shaved down in preparation for his record attempt. It worked and he broke the record by two seconds! It really was one of the big highlights of the meet. Carl celebrated by drinking a beer shortly after his race!
Me and Shelley.

Me. Stretching out. Waiting for my race. Waiting a long time...six hours! This was the first year of competition for me since my big shoulder injury. I swam pretty well on Friday and Saturday but I wasn't too happy about the other swims. I think the hardest thing was that it was a long course competition and we don't train in a 50 metre pool. Oh well, excuses begone. I had a lot of fun and the best part was being with my swimming family once again.

100 Free
100 Back
300 Reverse IM by 25
200 IM drills
8 x 25 Stroke there, Free back on :35
100 Warm down
2 X (25 Double arm back stroke , 25 Back stroke)
2 x (25 Breastroke pull with flutter kick , 25 Breaststroke)
2 x (25 Free with closed fist, 25 Free)
2 x (100 Back/100 Breast/100 Free) Progressive by 25
100 Free drills
200 Free pull with paddles
200 Kick with fins
200 Choice with fins
100 Warm down
50 Free fast
150 Warm down
200 Kick
100 Sculling

3200 m.

This probably won't interest anyone but me. But I want to write it out because it's important to me! And if someone else wrote it I'd want to read it. So, be warned, it's about swimming!

So I went to my breaststroke clinic given by Jozef Nagy (coach of world record holder Annamay Pearse) this morning. The first hour was a lecture about technique. Breaststroke is the most technical of all the swimming strokes so this session was particulary useful. It's also the most physically taxing. That's why I love it, it's a challenge.

Nagy talked about one particular race at the Olympics, 200 m. breast. The Japanese swimmer was in 7th place for the longest time and then he seemed to pull up, passed everyone and won the race. But what really happened is that he actually kept the same pace for the whole race, and the other swimmers slowed down because they went out too fast. He said that the most important thing in breaststroke is keeping an even speed. Most people, even good swimmers don't have good timing with the arms and legs, so there is often a bit of a deceleration at some point. Speed up , slow down, speed up, slow down. Anyway. He also talked about how he only corrects one thing at a time. And we should train that way too. Only work on one error. He says it is too difficult to swim well all the time. Even the world champions don't. Breaststroke is just too taxing to do correctly at a high pace for any length of time except in a race. To me , this was the most valuable piece of information I got from the lecture. I always get bummed out that I can't hold the pace all the way through a set. It's normal! He showed us how to hold our hands, arms, body , legs....but I just found it too confusing. I was also scared I'd have to think too much now and not feel the water like I usually do.

Anyway, next was the pool session. There were a lot of us, twenty, so he couldn't spend too much time with each swimmers We warmed up and then swam one at a time, right beside him. I was a bit nervous. I'm swimming beside Jozef Nagy! And he's going to critique me and I'm going to never want to swim again. But it wasn't like that of course. Guess what? I have a very good continuous stroke! He gave me one small tip, to pull a bit wider at the catch. That's it. One small thing to work on. I'm happy now.

Okay, if you have never met me in person, you will not know that I rarely show excitement. Not sure why that is but many have commented on it. It has to be pretty big for me to jump up and down and at least smile. Smiling causes wrinkles anyway.

Anyway. There's a breaststroke swim clinic at UBC in December and it's run by Joszef Nagy who is Annamay Pierce's coach . He has also coached Mike Barrowman, Olympic champion and world record holder. Nagy invented the "wave" breaststroke style. He's famous, world renowned! And I'm going! I don't even know what else to say about it. I'm excited!

Pierse credits the arrival of acclaimed swimming coach Joszef Nagy as being instrumental in her recent success.
Pierse describes Nagy as "a genius when it comes to breaststroke." He sees every little thing we are doing in the pool and technically coaches us to be the best in the world," she says.

I need a new swimsuit now!