It was my first pentathlon. You know, maybe it's me, but it's astonishing how tired you get by the time you have to do the IM. Saw a lot of fast swimmers and even though I made a personal best in the 50 free, 26.65, I got spanked by the super heroes in my 45-49 age group.
Anyway, I was DQed on the IM for doing the flip backstroke turn. My bad, though I had no idea it wasn't allowed. It's legal for backstroke why not the IM, does anybody know the reasoning?
tony
In IM you have to finish each stroke of the IM the way you would finish it if were ending there. So two hand touch on fly and ***. One hand touch on back you can begin to rotate though. You can one hand touch then flip though.
A pentathlon is one event of each stroke plus an IM. Looks like the CalTech one was all 50's/100 IM. The one I entered (www.swimoregon.org/.../06pententry.pdf) is a choice of 50's/100 IM or 100's/200 IM, scored by cumulative time. It looks like Cal's was scored by place points?
I think it will be fun. This will be my second meet after joining my masters group, and it will force me to swim some events I would not normally consider. Always good to step outside your comfort zone and try new things. I think. Maybe.
Caltech Maters has been running this meet since 1974! It is a fun meet for everyone - newbies to vets. You may enter one or more events individually or enter all five events. There is a 50 of each stroke and a 100 IM at the end. The winner is determined by total time for all of the events. The second place cumulative time in the men's 55-59 was 3:00.67, the first place cumulative time was 3:00.66!!!!!
This is a fun meet that doesn't take too much time. We start at 10:00AM and are done by 1:00PM. We had just over 180 swimmers. We give medals for second and third place in each age group and a cool trophy for first place. There is an award for the overall fastest male swimmer and the overall fastest female swimmer. This year the overall fastest female swimmer swims for Caltech Masters.
The meet is usually held on the first Sunday in March. We have a deep 8 lane competition pool and an 8 lane warm up pool. This is beautiful outdoor facility. Sunday's air temperature was 70. I only recall one bad weather day back in 1999 when we had rain, but usually it is beautiful.
Besides local swimmers, we have had swimmers from Hawaii and this year one from New York. The results will be posted in a week or two at http://www.spma.net Go to meet results and find Caltech Pentathlon. You could actually find the results of 1997 - 2005 at that site as well right now.
Come join us next year.
Glenn Gruber
P.S. I am usually the announcer at the meet and this year I also swam in the meet. Double duty, but fun.
:)
Gull just told me he is pawning his Speedo FSII and buying us two tickets to join you next year. Here is a picture of gull so you can pick him out when we show up.
Don't be fooled by his svelte figure . . . he beat the Geek in the 200 and only lost the 500 by half a second. He should be able to thrash him easily in the pentathlon, especially if he wears his FSII.
I went to the website and this looks like a really fun event. Sometimes traditional meets get monotonous so it's good to see some fun stuff thrown in.
This would be super fun for me and gull80 to have a pentathalon showdown.
Gull just told me he is pawning his Speedo FSII and buying us two tickets to join you next year. Here is a picture of gull so you can pick him out when we show up.
Hey, who deleted my photo?
By the way, what do I get for my 1000th post
Geek:
Did you put that picture of Mark from Maryland also know as Freedivmd up? I think you did.
Gull:
I think that is why your photo was deleted. By the way for your 1000 post, start a thread that you know will be controversial. I know you can do it because your kinda of good at that stuff.
To Everyone Who is New:
Go to "The Future of Men's Swimming in the US" thread from last summer and you can see the picture that I believe Geek is referring to about Gull.
