Swim Meet Weekend...

This weekend is the Masters swim meet at St. Thomas - it's the meet that I've swam in the last 2 years. (My ONLY 2 swim meets.) It's where you all got to see my first dive start:

Much grace. Such wow. Many speed.

(Here's a link to my first swim meet in 2013 where I swam a 31.03 50 free [and where you can see video of that superb dive], and here's a link to last year's swim meet where I swam a 1:09.88 100 free.)


I did NOT sign up for the meet this year for 2 main reasons:

First of all, knowing I had a meet coming up in years past was the push I needed to get in the pool and swim more. But that hasn't been an issue lately. I've been putting in solid months of swimming since the end of October (as I showed in this recent post).

Secondly, my diving is horrendous, and I'm pretty embarrassed by it. I don't get embarrassed too easily (see also: the clothes I race in), but my diving "skill" bugs me. In that GIF above (from 2 years ago), I didn't do TOO bad (yes, that's considered not TOO bad) because a swim coach friend gave me a half-hour diving lesson a few days before that swim meet. Before that, I'd never learned how to dive. Like never. I quit swimming lessons as a kid right before the level where I'd learn how to dive. Then last year, my diving was horrible because I hadn't done it in a year - if you remember, it kept knocking my goggles off. Here are 2 photos from before last year's swim meet:

After those horrible practice dives, my chest looked like this:

This is not altered in any way. Unfortunately.

About 90 minutes later as I was getting ready to race, it looked like this:

Some bruising starting to the middle-left and the lower-left.

I've considered asking the lifeguard to let me do some practice dives off the blocks at Hamline University (where I've swam a few times this semester between my classes), but I'm even a little embarrassed to try that. AND the dive team has been practicing in the same pool where a few of us are swimming laps, so that'd be EXTRA embarrassing!

BUT I STILL HAVE AN EVENT ON THE HORIZON!! You've maybe seen the banter on Facebook… yes, there's a "throw down" in the works. The race is 2 weeks away. Check back for all the details on Monday.

Happy weekend!