Inaugural Masters Swim Meet

After feeling some pressure from a couple Ford Masters swimmers last Monday, I signed up for the Arizona Masters State meet. “C’mon Annie! We need the points!” How could I say no? It was to be held at the UA pool, which is a five minute drive from our house, so I really did not have a valid excuse. I signed up for the 50 breast and 50 free. Two lappers seemed a little daunting going off my pretend training…

I am a sporadic Masters swimmer. I swam at one practice last week and none the week prior. On a really disciplined week, I go three times. My workout regimen remains fairly intense outside of the pool though. I lift on Tuesdays and Thursdays, box (with a bag! I do not hit any human beings) twice a week and run once or twice per week. Swimming in college was so terrific in part because our training was always varied. Everyday had a theme, a purpose. The daily plan was never to stare at a black line. No room for boredom in the UA season plan.

I have taken that weekly pattern with me or perhaps I am so A.D.D. that I cannot stand doing the same modality of exercise everyday. I went on that training tangent to give you some background as to my aquatic comfort levels these days. Seldom do I go all-out when I swim. More often than not, I am getting in to lengthen my muscles and help them recover from some land animal exercises. So today I shocked the system with some racing!

I timed at the meet yesterday and had the opportunity to meet Nancy, an 80-year-old swimmer who took a piece of my heart back to Phoenix with her. She learned to swim at the ripe age of 73 and now says she can swim 40 laps in an hour. If you are in your twenties and intimidated by new things, Nancy is downright inspiring. She insisted on diving off the side of the pool. Watching some of these older folks dive can be scary. I think when I get to 70, diving may work its way out of my discipline. Nancy gracefully dive flopped into her 100 breaststroke and I wish I had counted her strokes. She took so many. She got to the 80-meter mark and just could not continue her bobbing, so she front crawled her way to the wall. Nancy got disqualified and it lit a fire. Today she told me she is going to do six 75s of breaststroke everyday at practice to work on her stamina. She hated petering out and vows it’s not going to happen again. Nancy, you’re who I want to be!

Nancy said she was not nervous before her 200 free because of how many laps she swims in an hour, yet I have trained for the majority of my life and most likely have thousands of laps on Nancy and those pre-race jitters still came out to play. All told, I had at least two nights of swim meet anxiety dreams and had butterflies in my tummy before I stepped up to race my first one-lapper today. These days I equate satisfactory sprinting to getting my limbs to all work together and accelerate simultaneously. No limb left behind. I felt like my legs were really lagging in my fifty breast today. It was a drag race, get it? I once had a bear trap kick; my legs snapped together with force. That trap was rusty today. My arms…well, if the water were a sports car it would shine! I wiped it without pulling much of it. All that nit-picky, criticism aside, I threw down a 33.3, which was a respectable time in my heyday. I clawed at the water, kicked my uncoordinated flutter kick and tried to hold off on grabbing a breath in the 50 free. I failed and stole two breaths, but still mustered a 27.8. Moral of the story, I’ve got some fast twitch left in me! Don’t call it a comeback, because it ain’t. Just the beginning of a long and lustrous Masters Swimming career 🙂