SPMS Champs Swim Meet

Today and the rest of the weekend, I'll be competing at the SPMS SCM Championship meet.  (Acronym decoder for those not "in-the-know"--SPMS:  Southern Pacific Masters Swimming, the swimming organization for old people in Southern California. SCM:  Short course meters, a 25 meter pool not typically used for competition in the United States, but a standard in most of the rest of the world.)

My thoughts on this:  I've been plagued with back and foot injuries that have really cramped my style for a while--I'm simply headed out here to have fun.   I've entered all sprint races, and I'll be swimming 6 individual events and 5 relays.    The catch here is that these are some of the races that were arguably my best events in high school and college.   My major goal is to go out, compete, have fun, and not get obsessed over performance or comparisons to the swimmer that I once was.   Anyone who sees evidence of me getting obsessed over these things--feel free to give me a good smack in the ass and tell me to stuff it!

As I went through workout last night, I came to the realization that I've spent the past several years training my body to keep going for races lasting 5, 6, or 13 hours--and that's just a little bit difficult to translate to races that last a minute or less than 30 seconds.   I mentioned this to Erin (Grunion Masters Team swim coach), and she gave me her recommendation for how I should warm up to have a good race--it flew in the face of how I warmed up for these races 20 years ago...but then, I'm a completely different athlete than I once was.   Effectively, the advice was to hit the race dripping wet from having just gotten out of the warm-up pool after swimming a set that would effectively be the beginning portion of descending to an all out effort, which I would do in the competition pool.   This stands in stark contrast to my days of warming up an hour ahead of time with a couple of 5 second sprints to the get the muscles moving, and then collapse somewhere and relax until it was time to get to the blocks. 

I realized I have no idea what I'm doing in a sport that I've spent so many years gathering experience--so it's time to sit back, relax, and just have fun with seeing how things go.  Erin's advice is certainly right given my recent background, so that's what I'm doing.   Time to go have a good time!