Tomorrow morning is my very first swim meet. I'm very nervous but it was time for me to finally see what I could do in competition versus practice. There are so many things that can go wrong like forgetting to exhale well under water, running out of steam during my 100 free, forgetting stoke mechanics, diving too deep, etc. I don't care how i do compared to others, I'm competing with myself. I always imagined my race times would be faster than my practice times and I know i will be very disappointed if that's not the case. Any words of advice on how to mentally approach this wold be greatly appreciated. Like you wet the bed in your first meet but it got better in subsequent meets:D.
One other question; how do I control the depth of my dive on entry. I rarely every get to practice dives because our pool doesn't allow dives off the blocks unless with the team/coach. So I can only practice it off the pool edge (my masters team doesn't do much start practice). Should I arch my back on head and trunk entry or angle my hands up? If I dive too deep (I hardly have a superb dolphin kick to compensate), I'm toast. It's pretty much hit or miss with me now.
Thanks.
Good swimming. May I critique your fly? It was as if you came to stop when your arms and hands hit the water so hard. You must get them in cleanly.
Please critique as much as you can, :). I'm taking it like a sponge, want badly to get better. Do you mean on the start or on each stroke hand entry?
OK, so try to soften the entry as well as less splash. I'll concentrate on that. I've spent very little time on my non-freestyle strokes, but I think I've gotten far enough in freestyle where I can start to spend more time on fly, back, and ***. I will post my IM later and you will see my back stroke is atrocious.
Taruky, have fun. Relax behind the blocks and don't think. I'm not swimming (shoulders are still bad) but I am going to try to stop by. Hopefully I'll get to see you swim a bit.
Excellent job. Good work for a first meet. That was a lot better than I was expecting. A 27 second 50 Free is a very good time for a first meet. That's on par with your average high school swimmer. By average I mean average.
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A :27 50 SCY free is probably better than 90% of the masters swimmers I've ever swum with, including myself.
I'd certainly say it is much better than average for USMS.
Excellent job. Good work for a first meet. That was a lot better than I was expecting. A 27 second 50 Free is a very good time for a first meet. That's on par with your average high school swimmer. By average I mean average.
You have some work to do, but you've gotten past the hardest part.
OK, so here was my IM. My back stroke was a disaster, killed my time. I think my coach was correct when he once told me that the back stroke is the most important segment of the IM; can make or break your race. I was experimenting for a couple days with something he taught me; trying to imagine illegally carrying a basketball while dribbling. I actually did much better when I went for a swim today, not sure what happened in the meet. I also don't normally bicycle kick like this, but I kind of went brain dead in this event. I'm pretty confident I'll beat 1:23 my next time around just by not crashing into the lane line:), but any advice on other areas to work on is greatly appreciated.
www.youtube.com/watch
Thanks for all the support and help from folks before and after the meet. I felt on top of the world after this, mainly because I overcame my fear of competing and just did it. I learned a lot about myself. Masters swimmers are some of the nicest people I've ever encountered, both in the forum and at the meet. I have tremendous admiration for the older swimmers who compete, many of whom absolutely smoked my times despite having like 30 years on me.
