gary p wrote:
Congrats! There's a saying in swimming: "If you have a lane, you have a chance." Sometimes, you're the only one in your competitive group to step up to the challenge of a particular event. Others had their opportunity for a lane, but opted not to take it. Great to see you get rewarded for putting yourself out there in a sport you're pretty new at. Also great to see that you learned from the DQ's at the last event and were able to swim "clean" in every event this past weekend, despite a very challenging program. Honestly, I don't think I'd have the cajones to swim the 400 IM, 1500 free, 200 fly, and 400 free in the same 2-day event, never mind adding the 100 fly, and 100 IM to that. I really like how you split that 1500. And your 400, that's pretty much textbook execution. Normally you'd expect to see the first 50 a bit quicker, but I understand you have to give up a little on the start so that was solid start-to-finish. Well done on the whole meet.
Thanks Gary. In terms of entering a lot of events (and racing them to my degree of ability) as I am not a life long swimmer, the main goal right now is to go through the process at meets, and learn to execute everything cleanly and learn not to make dumb mistakes (as Monty said, it is much harder in a meet than in practice). My experience in other sports (track, running, triathlon, skiing and several team sports) is that the only way to rise to perform to your personal ceiling is to get exposed to the self concocted pressures of racing and going through the process and while the athlete in me wants to minimize my times, the swim newbie in me wants to maximize exposure to the sport variables in a meet.
For the rest of you guys, it's like me in Ironmans...pretty well every scenario imagineable in Ironman racing I have been exposed to after 31 of them in all kinds of weather, courses, and formats. If my body worked, I could literally roll out of bed tomorrow and I would know exactly what to do in an Ironman, a 10K, an XC ski race, a track meet. I can watch an Olympic track meet and point out countless dumb things that pro track athletes are doing, just because that is in my DNA since I was 12. When I watch relays at the Olympics watching half the teams and their suboptimization of tactics and missing baton handoffs etc I am pulling my hair out watching amateur hour even at the pro level. When I watch swimming in the Olympics, really from a execution angle, I can't really comment....the rest of you guys can. As I am finding this sport very interesting from a problem solving angle (even with my lack of speed), I find it exciting getting exposed to all these data points in racing and then trying to deal with them.
I THINK one of the biggest values I provided to people that I coached for Ironmans is how to get the most of themselves on race day. You guys are helping me figure that out for swimming.