On the ferry from Seattle to Victoria

Heats 50 free, I'm in the middle lane

here comes the grand piano...

The team cheering energetically!

 

Pan Pacific Championships 2006

       

   The Pan Pacific Championships ended about 10 days ago, and my voice is finally returning to normal! We had tremendous team support and cheering, and the smallish venue of the 1994 Commonwealth Games pool in Victoria, Canada, made every scream feel louder and closer than usual. It was an exciting meet with 6 world records, and numerous fast times! Pan Pacs works a little differently to World Championships, Commonwealth Games and Olympics in that a nation can enter multiple swimmers, basically whoever opts to race in each event. So what that means is we didn’t only compete to make the team, we then have to compete within the team to make the finals!! It made for some exciting morning swims and was a good exercise in getting up and swimming fast early. That will be an especially useful experience if the Beijing Olympics definitely have the finals conducted in the morning. (yes, crazy stuff happening in world swimming!)

    I qualified for Pan Pacs in 50 freestyle, but opted for a race in 100 freestyle also. 100 freestyle was 2 days before and therefore the perfect amount of time to wake my body up for racing, yet still have time to recover! I swam my 100 using skills I would need in my 50, and not really worrying about time. Probably a good thing, because the time wasn’t flash!! But I nailed everything I wanted to, and certainly woke my body up completely!! (and painfully!) My 50 was on Sunday the 22^nd, and I qualified smoothly for finals. That night I struggled to cut more time off the clock, but certainly found speed. A little too MUCH speed. I got pumped up, excited, and ready to race. I powered off the blocks, into my dolphin kicks that I’ve been working hard on, and came out with bristling speed! The only problem was that the bristling speed was because I was over revving, and my motor burnt out by about 45 meters. It may seem like it would be possible to maintain speed over those last 5 meters of racing… but it so happens that when the motor cuts, it’s as though a grand piano drops from sky scraper height and crashes into little old me. In fact I’m surprised I was to stay on the surface considering that!! I finished in 6^th place.

   I have plenty to learn from the race, and my journey continues. I worked really hard last season on getting my speed and power up, and certainly succeeded in that! Now it’s time for me to focus on stretching out, whilst maintaining all that wonderful speed. I’ve got a great base to work from, and I trust that it will come together for World Championship Trials in December in Brisbane. I’m heading to Bath, England to train with my coach Kim Swanwick who helped get me on the World Short Course team 2006, and with whom I’ve stayed in close contact since. Although I’d love to continue to swim with Andy Deichert under the Florida sun, and play alongside the fish on the reef; with hurricane season in full pelt, it’s time to get out of dodge.

   My sister is getting married in just over a week (YEAY!) so until the wedding I’m spending time breathing the thin air up in the Colorado mountains, and riding my bike everywhere. It’s beautiful up here, and certainly a wonderful way to spend a holiday while maintaining good fitness.

   Make your dreams a reality!