Crazy Dog Lady Goes to a Swim Meet

Some of the masters coaches got together and decided to have a swim meet for the beginners.  And while I'm hardly a beginner, I've never been in a swim meet before and the meet was open to anybody who wanted to go.  As it turned out plenty of fast, experienced folks turned up.  I wasn't going to go because I still don't have my flip turns figured out and I hadn't been swimming a whole lot the past few weeks.  But peer pressure from lane mates and the chance to do more diving off the blocks won out in the end.  It turns out I like diving from the blocks now that I sort of kind of know what to do.  And it was free so what did I have to lose?

It was funny how many people were nervous before the meet.  It was just supposed to be a fun thing to give people a taste for what a swim meet is like.  I wasn't nervous but was looking forward to seeing what my times would be for the various distances and my goal was to swim each one as hard as possible.  I signed up for the 200 yard freestyle, 100 yard free, 50 yard free and 200 yard relay (each person swims 50 yards).  200 yards was the farthest distance they had and only 4 of us signed up for it.  We had to put down estimated times for each event so they could seed us into waves and I grossly underestimated all my swim times because I didn't realize how much time you save by diving in.

In the end I had a blast and was shocked at how fast my times were.  It's long been a pipe dream of mine to swim 100 yards in under 1:30.  Best I've ever done in practice is maybe 1:34 and that was with some serious drafting.  But there's no drafting at the swim meet, you have the lane all to yourself so I figured I'd be a little bit slower than in practice and estimated my 100 yard time at 1:40.  In the end I swam it in 1:26.  I couldn't believe my eyes when I got out of the pool and saw my time.  Now this is not a fast time for a real swimmer but I was so happy to finally break that 1:30 barrier.

The other great victory for me was the 200 yards.  I guessed I'd swim it in 3:40 and swam it in 3:09, beating a guy that usually swims in front of me at workouts by a whopping 10 seconds.  And he was doing flip turns.  He was in the lane next to me and led for the first 100 yards then I noticed I was catching up to him and next thing I knew I was ahead and he never passed me again.  And I had the disadvantage of being in the end lane where the wall creates extra drag.  So happy with that result as well.

I'd guessed 45 seconds for the 50 yards and came in at 38 secs and in 2 place of 5 women which surprised me since I'm not a sprinter.

Our relay team was randomly assigned and came in 2nd out of 3 teams.  My 50 was 38 secs. for that one as well.

Afterwards a bunch of us went out for dinner and I had a fun time hanging out with my lane mates.  It turns out that when you're a hypnotherapist people are much more interested in your job than when you're a structural engineer.  And nobody mentioned dog poop the whole night.

Final Stats:

200 yard freestyle
3:09.81
2/2 women
3/4 overall
(1st place was 3:01.42, 4th place was 3:19.89)

100 yard freestyle
1:26.04
2/3 women
(1st place was 1:03.34, 3rd place was 1:33.9)

50 yard freestyle
38.14 secs
2/5 women
(1st place was 36.86, 3rd was 40.01, 4th was 42.86, 5th was 43.20)

200 yard freestyle relay
2/3 teams (1 male, 3 females on our team)
my leg was 38 secs.

Maybe pigs will fly and I'll do another one some day.