celebration!
I know there is something unseemly about bragging about ones swimming times. I think for many masters swimmers, a sense of personal accomplishment is best savored inwardly. John Wayne, were he to have taken up masters swimming, certainly would never have jumped up and down in giddy pride over a personal record. Nor, I suspect, would Clint Eastwood.
Having said this, I would just like to take a moment to jump up and down in shameless giddly pride over a recent swim I had!!!
At Y nationals in Ft. Lauderdale a couple weeks ago, at the age of 49, I swam the best 200 yard freestyle of my life--a 1:55.11, which beat my high school and college time by nearly a full second. I realize this may actually say a lot more about my former mediocrity that it does about my current prowesss, but the fact remains that as I near semi-centenarian status, I was able to whoop my teenage self!!! (Sorry about that, youngster Jim; you just didn't know how to race smart back then.)
I went into the race hoping just to break two minutes; I had never before broken 1:56, and this didn't even enter my consciousness as a possibility. When I finished the race--splitting 57 and 58 respectively--I wasn't even all that exhausted. I looked over, saw my time on the big board, and I have been ludicrously, bumptiously proud of myself ever since.
Anyhow, I'm hoping that rather than annoying my fellow masters swimmers who may read this post, this exercise in self-congratulations/aggrandizment will encourage others to pen their own moments of personal satisfaction. Where better to celebrate than here, where your fellow swimmers actually know about swimming times and (unlike the world at large) conceivably even care?
Parents
Former Member
Jim,
I think you can tell by the overwhelming response that most of us are thrilled and inspired by your PR, and not put off by the strutting. (It's hard to object to someone "dissing" his younger self.)
Thanks to folks like you, I too have some hope to eventually take down some high school/college PR's. I thrilled myself last August when I figured out that my 400m time, converted to 500y, beat my best time from high school. (Now, the all time, college PR is another story.) In the beating my younger self competition, I don't count events that I never swam in HS or college, but those fly times are looking soft, and my meters PR's are a possibility since all my shaved, tapered swims were SCY.
Thanks for the note,
Matt
Jim,
I think you can tell by the overwhelming response that most of us are thrilled and inspired by your PR, and not put off by the strutting. (It's hard to object to someone "dissing" his younger self.)
Thanks to folks like you, I too have some hope to eventually take down some high school/college PR's. I thrilled myself last August when I figured out that my 400m time, converted to 500y, beat my best time from high school. (Now, the all time, college PR is another story.) In the beating my younger self competition, I don't count events that I never swam in HS or college, but those fly times are looking soft, and my meters PR's are a possibility since all my shaved, tapered swims were SCY.
Thanks for the note,
Matt
