Swimming is our Life
We have swimmers. 5 of the last 6 weekends we have gone to swim meets. Sometimes they take FOREVER. Sometimes we are home around noon. They all start EARLY.
We are ducklings in a pool of sharks when it comes to speed and skill. Ellen and Drew are at the young end of their age group. Megan is old at YMCA meets because they have 6 and under races. Even still, there is always some eager beaver 6 year old who swam last year.
What I am getting to is that they like to swim. They improve their times. But they don't win events. They don't even win their heats.
But I think that we may be making progress. Last weekend the girls swam in a pentathlon. That means that they did each of the 4 stroke - butterfly, backstroke, breast stroke and freestyle. The fifth race was an IM. Ellen improved her time in every event, even though she got disqualified in butterfly. And, she won 2 heats. You should have seen her on breast stroke! She has been working on this one, in particular. She has corrected her kick and it is finally legal. She was trailing by about 2 strokes as they approached the turn. She made up a little time there. With half a length to go, she was determined. I never saw her look fast in the water until then! She gave it everything she had and eked out a win (in her heat).
Then there is Megan. She only swims once a week and I was pretty sure that she would be DQed in 3 events, which she was. But you have to admire her guts. She went off the blocks that came to her chin. She swam a total of 16 lengths Saturday, including warm up. She has never gone that far in a week. Ever. One teammate pulled herself out of the pool after the butterfly length of her IM. Megan might have been disqualified, but bless her heart, she finished the race! 4:07.47 for 100 yards.
You can see how they have been doing here. The times look funny for last week because they add them all together to determine the winner. So, if you finish the race but get DQed, they add 2 minutes to your time. If you scratch from an event, they give you 5 minutes as your time even though you didn't swim.
We are ducklings in a pool of sharks when it comes to speed and skill. Ellen and Drew are at the young end of their age group. Megan is old at YMCA meets because they have 6 and under races. Even still, there is always some eager beaver 6 year old who swam last year.
What I am getting to is that they like to swim. They improve their times. But they don't win events. They don't even win their heats.
But I think that we may be making progress. Last weekend the girls swam in a pentathlon. That means that they did each of the 4 stroke - butterfly, backstroke, breast stroke and freestyle. The fifth race was an IM. Ellen improved her time in every event, even though she got disqualified in butterfly. And, she won 2 heats. You should have seen her on breast stroke! She has been working on this one, in particular. She has corrected her kick and it is finally legal. She was trailing by about 2 strokes as they approached the turn. She made up a little time there. With half a length to go, she was determined. I never saw her look fast in the water until then! She gave it everything she had and eked out a win (in her heat).
Then there is Megan. She only swims once a week and I was pretty sure that she would be DQed in 3 events, which she was. But you have to admire her guts. She went off the blocks that came to her chin. She swam a total of 16 lengths Saturday, including warm up. She has never gone that far in a week. Ever. One teammate pulled herself out of the pool after the butterfly length of her IM. Megan might have been disqualified, but bless her heart, she finished the race! 4:07.47 for 100 yards.
You can see how they have been doing here. The times look funny for last week because they add them all together to determine the winner. So, if you finish the race but get DQed, they add 2 minutes to your time. If you scratch from an event, they give you 5 minutes as your time even though you didn't swim.
posted by metamom at Monday, November 05, 2007
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