Sprint Classic Swim Meet

Last weekend, I competed in my second Master\’s meet in the Sprint Classic held at our home pool in Fairfax, VA. It was only the second time I have competed since I have graduated from school, and although my times were nowhere near my best times, it was a great meet and I had a lot of fun getting back into competition mode.

It was only a one day meet which I thanked the stars for, because even though I\’m only 24 years young, anything more than that now wears me out! I went to practice Saturday morning and had a nice long warm up, did some starts off the blocks to make sure I still remembered how to dive, and took it easy the rest of the day to prepare for the meet the following day. I did the bare minimum the week up to the meet, since we were technically tapering for it, and I used it to my advantage. Unfortunately though, Nate didn\’t think taper was a good enough excuse to get out of doing dishes – it was worth a try!

The morning of the meet, I got to the pool nice and early so I could take my time warming up. I had a lane to myself for a little while which is rare at meets so I soaked it up! I got a good 40 minute warm up in before it got too crowded for me and I called it quits. I didn\’t realize it when I signed up for my events, but there was an hour between my first two events and then my last four were all within 20 minutes of each other. So I had plenty of time to hang out with my friends in between my first few races. It was fun to joke around and talk to some of the other swimmers, and some may have even convinced me to swim in another meet in December. We\’ll have to see!

The first race that I swam was the 100 backstroke. Since it was the Sprint Classic, this was my longest race of the day, and also my favorite race. The 100 back has always held a special place in my heart. It was the first race ever that I qualified for state in way back when I was 12 years old. I also hold the state record (for 19 and overs) back in South Dakota for the 100 back, and it is just always a race that I have enjoyed doing. While I was competing in college on the club team, I think I put a lot of pressure on myself for this race just because I wanted to continue to improve my time and prove I was a really good backstroker. This would cause me to kind of panic before I swam it, and get really worked up beforehand. At the beginning of college it didn\’t affect my racing too much, but by the end I was getting in my head so much that I didn\’t perform well at all and wasn\’t even coming close to my best time. The fastest I have ever swam the 100 back was when I was a sophomore in college when I went a 1:03. I haven\’t come close to touching that time since then, and I think it does have a lot to do with me putting so much pressure on myself. However, I remember being behind the blocks last weekend before this race and not feeling any kind of pressure at all. It was probably the most relaxed I have been before this race in a few years, and I felt a noticeable difference in how I swam. The only thing I wanted to do was swim it better than I had earlier this year, and I did! Back in April I went a 1:09.28, and last Sunday I went a 1:08.36. It was still in no way a great time, but I went almost a whole second faster this time and I was very proud of myself. I’m not out to prove anything to anyone anymore, I’m just out there to have fun. Now that I am not being so hard on myself, maybe I can see my time drop closer to that 1:03 again.

I also had a good 50 backstroke. I had the same goal in mind for this race, I just wanted to do better than I did in the spring. I dropped about half a second in this race, which I can’t complain about either. In the spring I went a 32.21, and this time I went a 31.70. I never really put pressure on myself for the 50, it’s always been seen as a fun race to me. We didn’t swim 50s in high school, so when I got to swim them again in college, it was more of a treat than anything and I just went and had fun. I need to work on getting this same mind set for my 100!

AND I also swam all four 25s this meet since it is one of the only meets that we are able to do so. I have never swam 25s in a meet before, and I really do think I was missing out on these my whole life! They were so much fun. Even the 25 fly and 25 breastroke were fun, and I’m not a huge fan of those strokes. They were over so fast, I didn’t even have time to get tired. I just hopped out of the pool with a big smile on my face and walked back to the other end for the next 25. They went so quickly, I think they were done with all the 25s men and women, in 15-20 minutes. I actually had to write my events on my hand, which I haven’t done since middle school, because they went so fast and I didn’t want to get confused. Since I had never swam them before, I entered a guess for a seed time, and I realized when I got there that I probably guessed too slow of times. I was in the slow heats for all four 25s, but that’s okay because I ended up kicking booty in all my heats which made me feel pretty good. 😉

Overall, it was a very fun weekend swimming and hanging out with friends doing what we all love doing. I look forward to doing more meets and of course the great practices we have every week. I hope my love for swimming never dies and I’m able to continue doing it for a very long time!

Until Next Time 🙂

Megan Reiffenberger