My first IM event in 19 years

The fly leg looked good, Paul. Are you a butterflier? Used to be. Actually my three main events back in the day were 50,100 Free and 200 Fly. My Fly leg is the only thing on that video that I was actually satisfied with. Still needs work but since I've only been back in the pool since 15 Sep of this year, I need to cut myself some slack. On Back my stroke rate was too slow, on *** - I'm swimming it old school style - working on the 'new' breaststroke but it's gonna take time. and on my Free my strokes were too short and the kick was weak. Other than that :thhbbb: it was a good first event in my first meet in over 19 years. I had planned on having videos of all my events but I forgot to make sure that there was a memory card in the camera so this video filled up the limited internal memory. Ah well. But I was happy with the quality since I was in Lane 1 and my wife was in the spectator area on the complete opposite side of the pool. Paul

Thanks, SS. Sorry I seemed like a ringer. I honestly had NO idea what to expect. I thought I was dead meat after Fortress put up that 1:07. So I decided to swim as hard as I could and if it meant risking sinking to the bottom of the pool, so be it. :D Paul

The fly leg looked good, Paul. Are you a butterflier?

I saw this live and Paul's Fly looked awesome. If I had known I would have asked for some tuition...pre races...oh well next time...

Well, gee. No comments? I know it wasn't that good :dunno: Paul

Well, gee. No comments? I know it wasn't that good :dunno: Paul You know, I couldn't see you that well in the video. You were too far away. I missed watching your IM in person because I was in the warm down pool. I did see your 50 fly and 50 free though and your 25s. I think your fly looks great! In both fly and free, you have a nice relaxed recovery over the water. Nice undulation. You look like a natural. Could maybe flatten it out just a touch and add some SDKs. From what I could tell, you do have that old fashioned BR. But who needs evilstroke for more than a 25 anyway? :laugh2: Get out as far as you can with a whomping dolphin kick on the pullout so you minimize how many strokes you actually have to take. You could probably work the turns better. Gotta blast off each turn.

Your back to *** turn was slow..... you need to rifle it !. John Smith Tried a flip turn on Back to ***. Jury's still out on that one. Needs work. I'm going to drill them some more in practice and if I can't get more comfortable with them in the next week, it's back to a more normal turn. Thanks for the comments. Paul

You know, I couldn't see you that well in the video. You were too far away. I missed watching your IM in person because I was in the warm down pool. I did see your 50 fly and 50 free though and your 25s. I think your fly looks great! In both fly and free, you have a nice relaxed recovery over the water. Nice undulation. You look like a natural. Could maybe flatten it out just a touch and add some SDKs. From what I could tell, you do have that old fashioned BR. But who needs evilstroke for more than a 25 anyway? :laugh2: Get out as far as you can with a whomping dolphin kick on the pullout so you minimize how many strokes you actually have to take. You could probably work the turns better. Gotta blast off each turn. Yeah, I agree. One thing that was very weak in that meet was hitting a tight streamline. I was getting good push offs with my legs but I was killing my speed with lousy streamlines. I've been trying to work on that in practice but I'm still just trying to survive an entire practice so that's not going so well :mad: but I'm trying to hit as many tight streamlines as I can off the starts and turns. I'm swimming the 50 free, 100 IM and 50 Fly at the Carol Chidester Memorial Swim Series at UMBC this Saturday so we'll see if I have improved my technique any. I hope so as I am going for our teams record in 40-44 50 Fly. Just need to knock another .6 off and I've got it :woot: 50 Free will take a small miracle to manage as that is over a second. And 100 IM will require dropping over 2 seconds so that will be a definate challenge. Paul

Hi, Paul: it was a nice sprint IM and I can't believe you have not done one in so many years... my comment is about the freestyle - If you had skipped that last breath and driven into the wall, I think you would have gained .2 - .4 seconds. Keep up the good work!

Just do a bucket spin turn (i.e. classic back turn) from back to ***. It's not worth doing a complete reverse flip. It takes about as long to get over the top and it consumes too much Oxygen. John Smith I did my first roll over flip turn on the 100 IM at that meet. It was only half successful as the touchpads were moving around and it freaked me out in warm up. (Also, as Paul rightfully told me, the fretting about the turn made my backstroke leg way too slow. I was out a full second too slow, I think.) BUT, I think the flip is much faster. At least for me. I'm much slower doing that old bucket spin thing. But Paul is very tall, so maybe the flip would be slower for him. Jeff Roddin sure did a dazzling one!