Tuesday, April 18, 2006

23 days to Nationals

Eeps! Really, this trip is an excuse to sit on the beach with friends and drink fruity frozen drinks under the guise that I’m competing at the US Masters National meet. For the record, I am entered in the meet. I did not qualify for anything but the rules say that you don’t actually need to qualify for anything if you enter 3 or fewer events. So, I’m swimming one event per day: 200 free, 100 breast, and 100 IM. Nothing too horrible or painful. I’ve been swimming a LOT of 200’s lately, so that should be a breeze.

The 100 breast is a slightly different story. I went to my coach in October asking for help with my stroke, thinking this would be a simple fix. Yeah, silly me. Nothing is ever simple with my coach. I then spent about 2 practices a month (sometimes more, never less) doing a short axis pulse with flippers. This basically looks like a dolphin kick, with no kick involved. Its basically doing a sin curve with your body thru the water. And its hella boring. Which is why I really only did this about 2x a month.

So, now that this meet is a month away, I’m now in semi-panic mode. I need to learn how to do this for the meet. So, much to my surprise, Coach has decided to speed up my progress a bit. Usually, he’ll give me a task, and that’s all I’m allowed to work on for many successive practices, which is boring. I think that since I’ve got this race in less than a month, he’s willing to speed the process up a bit. He even said that this week, I might be ready to take a complete stroke. Not multiple strokes in succession, mind you, but a single solitary stroke. Ha ha ha.

Today, I took half a stroke. Woo! Arm movements! So, I guess this week I get the arms worked out and then sometime btwn now and then I’ll work on my kick and timing (big laugh). This should be amusing.

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