1st swim meet in awhile = fun times (but not very fast times lol)

Good Friday, an unusual day to participate in your 1st swim meet in awhile, but that's where I found myself and a great group of team mates!

It was Masters Provincial Championships and my first meet in 2 years.  I was slightly nervous about this,,, people seemed a little shocked when I told them this, but it's true; I've had some swimming 'ups and downs' in the last 2 year and sprinting in a pool felt oddly unusual and intimidating.  But this is where the power of team can come in and help out even in an individual sport.  It was really my friends/team mates who drew me in, to giving it a go.

But my fears, unfortunately didn't inspire me to train harder or more often in the pool.  The meet remained a secondary "goal" as I was focusing more on my running; with about 60% of my workouts being running, 30% swimming and 10% spinning.  And Around the Bay 30k road race was just 5 days before the swim meet.  I had high hopes for ATB; but due mainly to some leg issues leading up to the run, I was mildly disappointed with my run of 2:53 ~ well off (15 minutes) my best ATB time, which I had hoped was going to be beat this year.  My leg was still causing me some pain on swim competition day.

So you might think my fears, my lack of swim focus/training, and the short recovery time after the 30k run, would mean I'd enter just a couple events, but I maxed out my events on the 1 day (of the 3 day meet) that I attended.  6 individual events and 2 relays.

orange cap (me)

It started with 50 Breast, I managed to do it in 40.5 seconds and came 3rd.
Then 50 Back, a very unusual event for me (I normally never do it, but I was picking 6 on this day and the 6th event was either 50 back, 200 back or 200 fly, so you may understand), officially the results say 38 seconds, but I'm pretty sure this is wrong.  Our coach and the lane timer got me at 41 which seems much more likely.  38 is going to be a very hard time for me to ever beat as a PB, I'll put a star beside that one LOL.  38 got me 4th, but so would 41, as 5 came in at 45 seconds, so I don't feel too badly about this time I don't really believe is right.
Then 100 IM, it felt okay until the free leg (key word leg ~ OMG I was feeling my legs, and not in the way that means they were working for me) 1:24.11 ouch! for 6th (sadly though 1:23 (still a few seconds slower then my typical 100IM) would have got me 3rd...)
The next event of the morning was the relay, and this is the fun part!  The team portion really adds something to my regular "individual" events.  This relay was the medley, Caroline was in for back, Sandra breast, Denyse fly and I brought it home with free and a fairly reasonable time of 31.4 and 3rd place.  BMSC's other relay team of Petra, Sarah, Colleen and Lynn took 1st.  Yeah team!
Then I had my own individual 50 Free with a 32.08, oh how I wanted under 32. (4th)
The rest was going to get conceivably harder, my events were getting longer and I was getting worn out:
200 Breast 3:24 (5th) and 400 free 6:13 (11th) ~ definitely tired!
And one more relay, mixed free, with Wade, me, Denyse and Remi, I only managed a 32.2 on this one and we only managed 6th.

TEAM

I was spent, but the shower felt wonderful.  In fact getting out of my swimsuit felt wonderful (squeezing into Cadence's racing suit for a whole day is not comfy ~ and I will never wear it for anything 400m or more again)

Well BMSC (our team) came 2nd overall, we had significantly less swimmers then 1st (the host team) and we even had fewer swimmers then the 3rd place team.  Someone did the math and points per swimmer we were in fact first.  So we all went out for a celebratory team dinner and fun!  And when we are tired and a wee bit waterlogged, we get kind of silly!  But that's another story that is probably best left unwritten :)