It just dawned on me - two more weeks and I’ll be on a plane to CA. In itself that’s a pretty amazingly wonderful thing. Can’t wait to see my people (and eat decent Mexican food, enjoy the smells of summer in CA, eat my way through the Mountain View farmers market, swim outdoors … )!! But hey, the reason I’m going is to swim World masters championships, which in itself is not all that impressive (qual times for Nationals were much faster than Worlds), except for the fact that I’ll be competing in the same meet with former Olympian medalists Dara Torres, Sheila Taormina and Gary Hall, Jr.
I know this because they posted the psych sheets, which lists swimmers in each age group and event by their entry time with the sole purpose of psyching you out. No shit, first of all there are 90+ people racing my events in my age group, secondly I’m competing against Olympic level swimmers. You know, those people who are more fish than human!! If that’s not enough to psych you out, what is? It’s a darn good thing one can’t be lapped in the 50m or 100m freestyle.
With two weeks to go and a goal of swimming personal bests and beating my college times (which would place me in the top half of the swimmers in my age group), I’m a little freaked out. Am I training enough, am I training too much, why am I constantly tired, am I eating enough, am I eating the right stuff, am I sleeping enough, should I have trained differently, how do you really taper well? It’s a mystery to me what I should be doing, but I suppose it will all be fine. I’m excited about competing with thousands of swimmers from all over the world, the rest will follow …
And before I forget, my real swimming role model is Ellen Tait, who at age 95 is swimming her third World Masters Championships. This is how I want to be when I grow up!
114 degrees in Livermore, same as Death Valley. At those temperatures, an ourdoor pool meet just becomes chlorinated athlete soup.