I propose a thread honoring old age in which each person lists their current physical ailments and general excuses that prevent them from beating people like Paul Smith and Rich Saeger.
I will lead with a growing list of my own.
1. Shoulder pain
2. Heart palpatations
3. High cholesterol
4. Left hip stress fracture
5. Lower back pain (from shoveling snow!)
6. Wife and 3 kids.
Perhaps we can give an award to the winner and the biggest whiner at the end of this thread.
John Smith
I propose a thread honoring old age in which each person lists their current physical ailments and general excuses that prevent them from beating people like Paul Smith and Rich Saeger.
I would like to weigh in on John's thread, but with a different spin... I am not old for one, but I have broken my right wrist (Oct 2004) and left wrist (July 2005). For anyone who was at LCM Nats 2005 Mission Viejo and saw some crazy guy swim with a full arm cast - that was me!!
For the different spin, I truly believe that these two injuries have helped me swim FASTER, thus enabling me to swim closer to the folks like Paul Smith, et. al. I definetely had a very intense post-injury drive to get back to where I was before. Swam with a cast for most of injury #1, and after 6 weeks of no swimming (except LCM Nats 05) for #2, I was back in doing a LOT of legwork until my cast came off 8 weeks later.
These setbacks became motivation. SCY nats 2005, I swam PBs in my 100, 200 and 500 free events (may have been some feminine motivation at that meet too); SCY nats 2006 swam PBs in 50 & 100 fly and 100 IM. Worlds was almost a redemption for Mission Viejo, and I swam PBs in everything and got a 13 second timedrop in the 400 that earned me my proudest achievement of a 10th place medal.
No injuries in '06, praying for none in '07, and another awesome nationals :-)
I propose a thread honoring old age in which each person lists their current physical ailments and general excuses that prevent them from beating people like Paul Smith and Rich Saeger.
I would like to weigh in on John's thread, but with a different spin... I am not old for one, but I have broken my right wrist (Oct 2004) and left wrist (July 2005). For anyone who was at LCM Nats 2005 Mission Viejo and saw some crazy guy swim with a full arm cast - that was me!!
For the different spin, I truly believe that these two injuries have helped me swim FASTER, thus enabling me to swim closer to the folks like Paul Smith, et. al. I definetely had a very intense post-injury drive to get back to where I was before. Swam with a cast for most of injury #1, and after 6 weeks of no swimming (except LCM Nats 05) for #2, I was back in doing a LOT of legwork until my cast came off 8 weeks later.
These setbacks became motivation. SCY nats 2005, I swam PBs in my 100, 200 and 500 free events (may have been some feminine motivation at that meet too); SCY nats 2006 swam PBs in 50 & 100 fly and 100 IM. Worlds was almost a redemption for Mission Viejo, and I swam PBs in everything and got a 13 second timedrop in the 400 that earned me my proudest achievement of a 10th place medal.
No injuries in '06, praying for none in '07, and another awesome nationals :-)
