Yesterday I was lucky enough to have pro photographer Mark Savage take some shots of me during my butterfly events. Mark swims for SCAQ, but he also happens to be an excellent portrait and celebrity photographer. You can check out Mark's blog here. I am beyond stoked at how awesome his shots came out!!!
If You Swam at Santa Clarita Yesterday, Go Watch Yourself Swim Online!
Yesterday's SCM meet hosted by the Santa Clarita Masters was livestreamed by LiveSwim.net which was pretty awesome... what makes it even better is that they have uploaded all that video to be watched again online!
start of the 50 fly (pic courtesy Patrick from Rose Bowl)
I had a really good time today hanging out with the Santa Clarita Masters for their SCM meet (and their 3rd meet this year! thanks guys!). The weather was just about perfect, 75ish and sunny with no wind. We had probably 125+ swimmers out there today and a whole bunch of my swim friends were in attendance. The vibe around the pool was really positive, the meet was well run, and I think everyone had a really good time.
I was a little apprehensive about the actual swimming portion of the swim meet because I've been having shoulder issues recently. I felt totally awful in the warm up pool, not what I was hoping for. I decided to just hop on the blocks for my 100m fly, see what happened, and base the rest of the day off of that.
Apparently I have quite the Pavlovian reaction to the starter's beep. I launched into my race with a general disregard for my overall well being. The 100m fly hurt pretty bad, but not in my shoulder. I repeated my 1:06 from UCLA, I can't get mad at that. I did get a brief lesson in just how fast someone can swim the 100m fly today though... a dude in my heat swam it in 54 seconds... wow... it's not so often I lose a 100m race by 12 seconds!
My next 2 races were 50's. I did the 50m free first and it felt pretty good. I swam a 28.47. Not a best time, but I was within a few hundredths of a second of it. I thought the 50m fly was a good swim as well. I went 29.99... one more hundredth and I would probably be less positive about my swim :) It wasn't as fast as I would have hoped, but good considering I almost missed it completely! I just barely made it to the blocks for this one, I was too busy talking and having fun instead of paying attention to what event we were on! I got some video of the 50m fly below...
My last race was the only one I set a personal best in and the one I was least happy with. I swam my 100m free in a low 1:04 which is a couple tenths better than my last outing. However my last 100m free attempt was semi-disastrous with 2 missed turns. I think on a good day I could break out a 1:02 high... it's just yet to happen. Oh well, I've got a couple more shots at it before the year is up.
I only took a few pictures today, but I did luck out and had some bonus pictures from my friend Patrick waiting for me in my inbox when I got home. Somewhere in the near future I should have a couple of shots from my super photographer friend Mark Savage so keep an eye out for those! (UPDATE: Check out the pictures Mark took of me here)
Today's CVMM contingent... fun fact, me and Peter wear the same size B70... figure that out
Me, Coach Chris from Mountain View, and Patrick from Rose Bowl
50m fly (pic courtesy Patrick from Rose Bowl)
more 50m fly (pic courtesy Patrick from Rose Bowl)
Santa Clarita's SCM pool
Since I was sore all over after the meet I was planning on skipping my ocean swim tomorrow, I need a day to recover. I got a phone call that sealed the deal for my sleep in instead of swim plan on the way home from the meet... my mom called me all worried about me swimming because there's supposed to be 14-18 foot swells tomorrow! Holy crap! Avila is usually around 3 feet maybe! I might go to the beach tomorrow but just to watch the water, I'm in no shape to throw myself into 14 foot swells!
The 2009 Santa Clarita SCM meet is coming up this Saturday the 7th of November. Santa Clarita has been an excellent meet host putting on meets for every season, I've had some really good swims there. There's 2 competition pools in the aquatics complex and the SCM races are held in the smaller pool. Online registration is available until midnight on November 4th, if you miss that you can still deck enter for $30 at the meet.
I'm not feeling so great physically at the moment but I'm still going to sign myself up for some events just to see how it goes. I entered the 100 free/fly and 50 free/fly.
I was killing a little bit of time on Facebook and happened upon something kind of curious... videos of me swimming that I didn't know existed! Highly unexpected! The SPMA Facebook Group has a whole bunch of videos from the Santa Clarita swim meet back in mid-May.
I found videos of my 50 fly, 50 free, & 50 breast. I really like seeing myself swim so that I can self diagnose some of the things I'm doing right and some of the things I'm doing wrong. If you've never seen yourself swim I highly recommend it, it's very eye opening. And seriously it's not that hard to get your hands on, practically everything takes video these days. I usually just use my digital camera.
If you were at the Santa Clarita meet go here and see if there is some video posted of any of your races. Even if you're not a Facebook user you should be able to view this page and the videos.
If you are a Facebook user, here are a few good groups for you to check out:
I'm thinking I need to track down all the LMSC Facebook groups and put them together in one place. Feel free to email me links (rob@robaquatics.com) or leave them in the comments, I'll try and find what I can by myself over the weekend.
I just got this picture that Tony from the SCAQ Blog took for me today. This is quite possibly the coolest picture of me ever. Generally speaking people my size shouldn't be airborne, but turns out it's a good look on me :)
You can see a bigger uncropped version of the picture here.
This afternoon I swam at the Santa Clarita LCM meet... apparently not all of you got the memo... attendance was a little light. The crowd that was there was great though. Most of the SPMA regulars seemed to be out and we even had some from Pacific Masters and Arizona out there today too. The meet had a casual no-pressure vibe and I really enjoyed myself. The weather was good and bad. It was super nice and sunny, but it was also 100+ degrees! There was a decent breeze most of the day that took the edge off the heat, but if you were on the pool deck barefoot at all, it wasn't a mistake you made for very long! The concrete was scorching hot and the downside to swimming all 50's is after every race you were 50m from your shoes. Luckily we developed a system where Kathleen (Patrick's wife) would watch the races and take pictures, videos, what have you... then she'd scoop up shoes and sandals for us and drop them back off in the shade of the timer's tents. Best idea ever. My feet salute you :)
I originally was scheduled for 5 events but I decided to drop one when I saw how fast the meet was going to go. This was round two for my Blueseventy suit and I wanted to give it a fair shot in 4 at least moderately rested 50's so I let the 100 fly go. This turned out to be a pretty good idea. We jammed through the non-1500m portion of the meet in like 2 1/2 hours. I should have a B70 review or some kind of B70 vs. Tracer post out shortly (sneak peak: I like the Tracer Light better).
My first race of the day was the 50 free. I didn't really have a goal in this one besides making sure my time started with a 2. I was in the last heat and there were about 4 of us that seemed, at least from my vantage point during the race, to be very evenly matched. I touched at 29.48 which was good for first in my age group, and I'm not positive, but I think I was second overall. Since there's no turn I tried to build up speed and then power my way through the race the best I could. I've been playing with more of a straight arm freestyle in short sprints and I'm strong enough to do this for maybe 30 meters... much more than that and it all falls apart. I'm going to keep playing with my freestyle because I feel like I'm stuck on my 50 and I think my current stroke is built more for a longer distance.
Next up was my 50 fly. I swam a 30.something (they still haven't posted results so I'm not sure exactly what I did) at San Luis Obispo about a month back and I wanted to hit a 30 or better again here. I focused on being long and relaxed. As much as it sucks to lose 1 wall per 50, it does give me a chance to build a really good rhythm in the water. I hit the wall at 30.63 which I believe was the best time in that event today... not exactly something I am used to saying but I like the sound of it!
My last two events were right on top of each other. I swam the 50 back and then within 10 minutes I was back on the blocks for the 50 breast. My 50 back was ok for me but it's really not my event. I felt like I zig zagged a little too much on the way down the pool but my actual swim felt as solid as me swimming backstroke is bound to feel. I touched at 36.98 and damn near broke my thumb in the process. I hit the pad fast and wrong. A few hours later I'm still sore but I'm ok, it works, it just doesn't like me right now. My breaststroke felt faster than I expected. It wasn't actually fast, but it felt good... if that makes sense. I finished in a 39.31 which really shows how bad I need turns and pull downs in breaststroke. That's 7 seconds slower than my SCY time!
All told, this was a good meet for me. I got myself some baseline times and got to spend the day with a good group of people. I even got a sweet pile of blue ribbons to make up for the beating I took at nationals in my age group! I don't have them just yet, but I should have some more pictures and videos from this meet sometime soon.
**here's an awesome picture from today that I just got my hands on!
Warm Up
Sweating to death while waiting for my first event
Santa Clarita is hosting a long course meet this weekend on May 17th. I know some of you are thinking... but I just did Nationals, it's lazy time. Personally I think you should give this one a shot. Think of it this way, you might just have a few hot swims left in you from this last weekend. Maybe your taper was off by a week? Who knows? Now is a great time to get out there and get some base line times for long course season in a super low pressure environment.
I've had some great swims at Santa Clarita and they always do an awesome job of hosting. This is the THIRD swim meet they've held in the last year! They hosted SCM in November, SCY in March, and now LCM in May!
I just signed up online for my own little sprint pentathlon. I'm out to get times in all the 50's and I'm swimming the 100 fly while I'm out. You've got until midnight on the 14th to register online, otherwise you can deck enter at the meet.
Thank you to Santa Clarita Masters for stepping up and hosting so many meets!!! I'll see you guys there.
I had an extremely good day at the pool today! I swam 4 personal best times, hit 2 of the USMS national times that I've been chasing, got to see a bunch of my favorite swimmer people, and I hit my biggest goal for this season... I broke a minute in my 100 fly!!!! But more on that later.
I drove down and back the same day for this meet, it's about a 3 hour shot each way. Normally I would have stayed the night somewhere but Santa Clarita is just close enough to home to be a reasonable day trip. This was my second time swimming at Santa Clarita. I'm really impressed with how nice their facilities are. This time we swam short course yards across the 50m pool. Overall the meet was really smooth and I'm really impressed with whoever was responsible for posting results to the web. My swims from today have already posted to My USMS Account on the USMS web site! Super fast! You should really sign yourself up for this if you haven't already, it's a really convenient way to follow your times, grab copies of your USMS card and other stuff like that.
My first race of the day was the 100 fly. I have been fixated on this race since the Cal Tech Pentathlon and I've been talking about breaking a minute in this race pretty incessantly. Going :59 in the 100 fly has been my overriding goal since I came back to swimming. I had decided that today was my day. Now I had to actually do it... I was in the last heat of the 100 and we were all seeded pretty closely to each other. When we got on the blocks I was pretty amped up. I felt really good off the start. I wore my TYR Tracer Light and it really rewards a good streamline. I hit the wall first at the 50 with a 27.50 which was only .25 slower than my best 50 time. I've had problems with my 2nd 50 a lot because I tend to gas out. In practice I've been doing tons of butterfly to build up my tolerance, I think it's starting to pay off. I felt strong through the whole 3rd 25 and I faded a little on the last length but not too dramatically. I touched the wall at :59.94, a new lifetime best not just a grown up best time, and finished the heat second overall. I won my age group but I think there were only 2 of us there in 25-29. When I finished the race I could feel that I broke a minute but I couldn't see it! The way the tents for the timers were set up certain lanes couldn't see the board. When I finally saw my time I was ridiculously happy. I wasn't tired anymore, just stoked beyond all belief. This is also about a second below my national cut for my age group, so I just bought myself an extra event at nationals (you can swim 3 events without qualifying, anymore and you need to make the times).
Frankly I could have gone home happy at this point, but I had the momentum and I knew there were some more good swims in me.
Next up was the 50 free. This was supposed to be the ultimate swim blogger show down between myself and Tony from the SCAQ blog but the heats were cut right between us. I was in lane four of my heat and he was in lane 8. Next time I guess. Even though we didn't race each other we both swam personal bests! I trimmed a few hundredths off of my last swim at Cal Tech which I'm pleased with. Tony dropped a few tenths off of his time. He put in a pretty solid swim and he was really excited when he finished. After touching the wall he checked out the board, made sure he saw what he though he saw and yelled out "PB!!!!!!!!" and promptly went into a best time delirium. Ultimately Tony squeaked out a win in our not-in-the-same-heat show down. I didn't get any pictures from that race but I do have 1 or 2 down below of Tony swimming the 100 freestyle which was also a best time for him! High 5 buddy!
Tony (scaq.blogspot.com) and Ahelee get ready to square off in the 100 free
100 free in action
Event number three was the 50 fly. I've had my targets set on a 27.23 all season. I keep almost getting it but not quite. I figured if my 50 split in the 100 was a 27.5 today I had to be able to hit it this time. I tried to get myself in the same place mentally as I was earlier in the day while I waited for my heat. A lot of the time I kind of play music in my head, if that makes sense. When it's race time I've got more of a heavy metal type of sound track going on. I was so ready to go when I hit the block that I almost lost my balance before the beep, luckily I held on and didn't false start. I think Patrick from Rosebowl was the only person that caught the tilting besides me. I swam my race as hard as I could focusing on getting as much as I could out of my streamlined dolphin kicking and I finally got my time down under my goal in this event as well. I swam a 27.10 which is a personal best and a .15 drop from my last meet.
After the 50 fly I had a whole bunch of time to watch my friends swim and talk with some people I only get to see every couple of meets. The people really are one of the best parts of going to the meets. Everybody is always so cool. After my 100 fly I had 3 or 4 people I haven't met before come up and congratulate me on my swim, how cool is that?
After hanging out for an hour I had to get back down to business and swim one more event, the 100 IM. I had such a good 100 IM at CalTech I figured that I should swim it here in Santa Clarita too to try and duplicate or beat my time. I had a volunteer videographer (thanks again Kathleen) catch the whole race for me. I swam right next to Ahelee so you see her pop into the frame every once and a while.
My 100 IM filmed by Kathleen, thank you!
I feel like my first 25 was really good and my backstroke wasn't that bad but I drifted really far towards the lane line. I probably added 1.5 seconds taking the long way to the other side of the pool. My breaststroke felt alright and my freestyle was solid. I beat my time from Cal Tech by about 2 tenths of a second for the 4th best time of the day!
I've been on a roll this month. Every swim at Cal Tech was best time and every swim in Santa Clarita was a best time as well! This definitely helps my motivation problem that I was having earlier in the week! I'm not sure what April holds for me just yet. I'm definitely planning on being at the SPMA Regionals in Mission Viejo for at least one of the three days, but I'm not sure if I'll be at UCLA or not. There's a triathlon here in Arroyo Grande that I might sign up for just to do the open water portion. The Olympic distance triathlon has a 1500m swim in Lake Lopez which would be good prep for the USMS 1 mile open water national championships going on the Monday after USMS SCY nationals in the pool in Clovis.
I signed up last night for the SCY meet going on in Santa Clarita next weekend on Saturday, March 21st. I swam at this facility during last year's SCM season and they have some very nice pools. I'm entered into the 100 fly, 50 free, 50 fly, and the 100 IM. If I'm lucky I may get to sneak in a relay too.
Rita Simonton from Golden West Swim Club in Huntington Beach broke her own 90-94 age group records in the 200m free (4:24.90) and the 400m free (9:01.89).
That was the question everybody had when they saw somebody just destroy the field in the 100m back on Saturday. This mystery swimmer also managed to jam through a 100m IM in :56.83.
Now that results for the meet are posted I have an Answer for you - Derya Büyükuncu. Not exactly a household name here but he's a pretty big deal in Turkey. He is a backstroker and butterflyer that has represented Turkey 4 times in Olympic competition. Derya swam the 100m back in :53.62 in Santa Clarita which is slightly more than 1 second slower than Aaron Peirsol's gold medal winning time in Beijing. Derya didn't swim as fast in China however. He went :55.43 in the 100m back, finished 30th and failed to make it to the semi-finals. He also swam the 200m back in the Olympics and finished 22nd.
I love that I can go to a masters meet and swim with a 4 time Olympian and also people 60 years older than me... how cool is that?
**Update: If you're looking for the official results of the Nov. 8th Santa Clarita SCM swim meet you can see them here
I swam the SCM meet at Santa Clarita today and I had a good time. The ride down (despite being 3 hours long) was beautiful, and the facility was excellent. I got there just as they were wrapping up the 1500m in the SCM pool and went and warmed up in the 50m LCM pool. The 50m pool was clear and clean but I swear it tasted like sunscreen. Maybe the kids in the synchronized swimming class bathe in the stuff before they practice, who knows. While I was trying to figure out where and how to situate myself for the day seeing as I swim unattached and I was flying solo today I lucked out and got "adopted" by Coach Nancy from Conejo Simi Aquatics Masters. She was nice enough to invite me over to hang out with her team today and kept an eye on my races if she didn't have a swimmer of her own to worry about. It was nice to get a little advice and feedback from a coach! I might join up with them for SPMA Championships in Long Beach to do some relays which I think would be really fun.
I mainly held steady with my current times today, but I did drop about 1.5 seconds off of my 100 butterfly. Not as strong as I wanted, but I'll take it. I was definitely stronger in the second half of my 100 fly today, but that last 25 was pretty shaky towards the end. I was second in my age group, but I don't know how many 25-29ers were out there. In my 50 free I went :30 yet again, I seem to be stuck. I think the thing that is really throwing me off is training in yards and competing in meters. I keep botching the turn because the wall isn't where I think it should be. My 50 fly felt good all the way through I just haven't been able to shave anytime off of that either. I think I went a :31 high... it's kind of hard for me to read the board with out glasses. The cool part about the 50 fly was that I got a few pictures! Kim (? I hope I have the right name) from CSA Masters was kind enough to act as my photographer - thank you!
Today really re-enforced my hypothesis that Masters Swimming is the most inherently friendly sporting organization on the planet. It's competitive but you're mainly competing against your own times so there's no animosity between competitors. How many times has a stranger ever genuinely wished you good luck right before you raced them? It's happened to me multiple times at masters meets. I wish I would have gotten off my butt and signed up sooner. If you're on the fence about joining masters go do it! There's nothing to be scared of, everybody's welcome. The skill level runs the gamut from this dude who went :53 in the 100 back today (which is spooky fast), and in the same event someone went 5+ minutes. So don't sweat it if you don't think you're fast enough to compete, you are.
But again I'd like to thank Coach Nancy and Conejo Simi Masters again for inviting me to spend the day with them. Also thanks to Tony from the SCAQ blog who I'm pretty sure hooked me up with some sunscreen. It didn't click in my head who he was until I saw his blog post about the meet today!
Today (Nov 1st) is the last day to send in preregistration forms for the Santa Clarita SCM meet on November the 8th. You can see a pdf of the meet info here. Preregistration costs $20 and it'll cost $30 to deck enter.
I've entered 4 events for this meet: 100 fly, 100 free, 50 fly, and 50 free. I've swam all 4 events in competition now and I'm hoping to beat my times from Davis and UCLA. Ideally I want to dip under 1:10 in my 100 fly, 1:05 on my 100 free, and break :30 in both of my 50's. That's all still a ways off of my all time best times from when I was much younger and a lot skinnier, but it's a start. This coming week I really need to keep working on building up my tolerance for butterfly so that I don't totally fade out on my last 25 in the 100.
The 2009 Santa Clarita SCM meet is coming up this Saturday the 7th of November. Santa Clarita has been an excellent meet host putting on meets for every season, I've had some really good swims there. There's 2 competition pools in the aquatics complex and the SCM races are held in the smaller pool. 
