First things first. I met and surpassed my goal of swimming one million yards in 2017, earned enough points to earn the 2017 USMS All-Star award in my age group and I swam all 5 postals and earned that award as well! All three goal achieved! Now for a bit more on the details, and there's quite a bit.
Starting in April, there was the Dixie Zone Championship meet, hosted by RAM at TAC. I competed in several events, working toward swimming all events as part of the Postal Swimtathlon. I swam all 100's of each stroke and the 200 IM. I had several pretty good times, highlighted by my 100 breaststroke, which was almost as fast as I swam it in college (I think the tech suit helped though).
May was a pretty yardage filled month and my shoulders started to feel it. I was prepping for my two races the first weekend in June and a combination of doing so much and bad posture and recovery led to some pain. It wasn't too bad to not swim, but it was becoming uncomfortable. Did the Jordan Lake Open Water Challenge on the 7th, 1.2 miles and finished in 00:58.35. Good enough for second overall female. Overall at the end of the month I had done 133,692 yards for the month, which makes for 566,095 yards (321.65 miles) for 2017 so far. That more than half way to the million yard goal.
Chattanooga Swim Fest was June 3rd and 4th. A 2.4 mile the first day followed by a 9.2 mile race the second day. The current was really strong for both races. The first day I was a little too far to the inside, so I didn't get as good a push as I could have, but still super quick. The 9.2 mile swim took me a half an hour less than the 7 mile swim around Lido Key. I drove out from Raleigh with Tom and John, Tom was swimming both and John was piloting for Tom in the 9.2. I had the race peeps assign me a pilot, which worked out great! My pilot's name was Dawn and she was awesome. We met up the day before the race at Whole Foods. It was good to talk to her a bit and get to know each other. During the race, I was just starting to pass people and it was over. The current was so strong that even though I trained for a 4 hour swim, it took half that time. Overall I came in 4th place for both races, which came with a pair of cool medals.
The weekend after the Swim Fest was the Swim Across America event at TAC, in memory of Brian Goldman, one of the RAM coaches until he passed away due to cancer. So many people came out. We even got to swim a bit with Ryan Held! Elaine Breeden and Erika teamed up with Ryan and taught a stroke clinic, which was really cool of all of them. I even got to help out Ryan during the clinic and check out his gold medal afterward.
Mid-June the shoulder pain caught up with me and ended in a cortisone shot and a weekend of rest. Hello rehab and taking int easy for a bit. Thankfully it's just some rotator cuff tendinitis and not a tear. Add it to the list I guess.
Next was the Growler Invitational in SC, just north of Charleston. A two-day, short course yards meet. This time I swam the 200's of each stroke and the 400 IM, the last 5 events for the postal. I swam an alright 200 fly and 400 IM the first day. In the 200 Free my goggles filled with water off the start, which made judging the turns difficult. As a result, my time wasn't the greatest so I re-swam it later in the year to make up for it. The second day I swam the 200 Back (for the first time ever) and the 200 breast. I think my breaststroke time was pretty good, though it had been a long time since I'd swum it. My 200 back was way better than I expected and was almost a second faster than my 200 fly. My backstroke is NEVER faster than my butterfly. I even got a compliment on my backstroke start, which Erika had helped me with leading up to the meet, so huge thanks to her. Chris even came along with me to the meet and made it to the pool in time to see my last race. It was a lot of fun!
I did the last 4 postal swims, but don't remember any of the specifics of them with the exception of the times (because I keep those).
I don't really remember what else I did last year, aside from the additional yardage to meet that goal and waiting to see the official All-Star and All-American listings.
In 2018, I didn't set a lot of goals, just kind of wanted to reset a bit. I had one swim race planned and one run race I signed up for; those I'll detail in another post. My yardage was significantly lower, which was planned, but I did start running again, slowly. With my nephew arriving in March, I knew I'd be spending a lot of time visiting and not swimming, so I didn't want to set a goal I knew I wouldn't achieve. I also purposely didn't sign up for or do any races the first half of the year for the same reason. Man oh man Dylan is so worth it and the cutest kid I've ever seen. Hello baby fever! By June/July though I had gotten my yardage back to a respectable level and my running was going okay, so can't complain. The only downer of the year thus far though is that I never did get my 10K postal swim done. All the pools switch to short course in the beginning of August, so I just couldn't get it done by then. Oh well, there's always next year! I did manage to get my 5K done with the help of Susan timing me and I will still be able to get the 3000 and 6000 done, hopefully!
No comments:
Post a Comment