DAM Brute Squad Postal Swim - Nov. 30 2016

On November 30th I did the DAM Brute Squad postal swim. On the very last day I could. That's a 200 Fly, 400 IM, 1650 Free, all back to back. Stopping is allowed only between the events, not during them. I was idiotic enough to do this after swimming 3100 yards of the noon RAM practice. I also haven't really been swimming much fly either, so there's that. All things considered my time wasn't horrible, but I know given the right circumstances I could have done much better. I finished in a time of 33 minutes and 38 seconds. That includes about 20 seconds rest between the 200 Fly and 400 IM, and about 10 seconds rest between the 400 IM and 1650 Free. I think this may have been tougher than the 10K postal I did this summer, though I'll probably recover quite a bit faster than that. Hopefully I'll be able to train more butterfly in 2017 and drop my time quite a bit. Fingers crossed. It sure was exhausting. I think Thanksgiving being less than a week before the swim may have had something to do with it. It really took me a few practices not to feel like total garbage after the Holiday. That's actually probably why I swam practice first, just to feel a bit better conditioned for the swim. I didn't push too hard in practice, but I'm not one to really slack off (anymore).

Thanks Darryl for timing me, and Doug and Sue for coming to cheer me on! I sure enjoyed my lunch afterward, until getting called into work that is. The other reason I was probably so tired was because

The picture below has my splits. It doesn't show the stoppage, but it's estimated above.

Brute Squad Postal Split Sheet

The results won't be posted until after December 10th, so I'm not sure how I did, but I'm just glad I was able to complete the challenge!

In another note, I did do the Inside Out Sports Turkey Trot 8K on Thanksgiving morning. I had kept the 2-3 days a week running in my schedule because of it. I PR'd and surprised myself with my time. I'm glad to have all my running races out of the way though, so now I can just focus on swimming.

USMS 3000 and 6000 yard e-postals - Oct 28th and Nov 1st, 2016.

The last 2 postal swims are the 3000 and 6000 yard swims. Same idea as the previous two, except these are done in a short course pool. Harry timed me again and this time I had a better idea of how fast I could go and how long it would take to complete. I did the 3000 yard swim first this time and really pushed a bit the first and last 1000 yards. This swim went really well I think. I hung around for practice afterward, just in case any of my teammates wanted to participate in the postal. No takers. I think next year I'm gonna try to promote them a bit more within RAM. Some other LMSC's have a lot more people doing them. I know several teammates who would do pretty well in most/all of the postal swims, so it'd be nice to increase participation a bit and see how everyone does.

Below is my split sheet from the 3000.

3000 yard postal split sheet.

The 6000 yard postal was rough. Only a few days separated my 3000 and 6000 postal swims, which may be part of the reason this one sucked a bit more. I was definitely tired, and quite honestly, just wanted to get it over with. My time ended up not being terrible, but was a bit slower than I know I'm capable of.  I was just glad to have it done. I definitely don't want to do them that close together again. Below are my split sheets for the 6000 yd postal.

6000 yard postal split sheet, page 1.

6000 yard postal split sheet, page 2.

After chatting with Mark a bit after Saturday practice, I learned a bit more about relays, and that he thankfully included me on some. I decided to put a relay together with the three fastest 3000 swims for NCMS. I got a hold of the other two ladies and they both said they were cool with it, so I went ahead and entered us (Thanks Anne and Debbie)! We are in the 25+ age group because of me, the other two ladies are 45+ and 55+, but they didn't mind. Hopefully we end up doing well in that category. SFTL is gonna be tough to beat, they have a lot of fast swimmers. More motivation to increase involvement next year. Lets got 2017!

The preliminary results were posted today (11/8/16) and, as of right now, I'm 2nd out of 24 for the 3000 and 3rd out of 10 for the 6000 in the 30-34 age group. Not too shabby. We'll see if those end up being final in a couple weeks. No word yet on relay results.