We hope that all of you enjoyed yourselves yesterday with the opportunity to get back to what sports is all about, being able to compete. Remember to send a little thank you to Coach Heather and also Mrs. Lim for all the hard work that they put in to afford all of you with the opportunity to get back to some racing. We would also like to thank all of our parents for helping us with the meet. It was much appreciated.
We were so proud of each and every one of you for following all the safety precautions that were in place to allow us this opportunity. You all took care of your warmups flawlessly with no issues and most of this was done on your own, and guess what no missed swims.
THE MEET
First observation was that within our groups we had no DQ's and this was with a lot of you executing your crossover turns in the IM. Apparently a few of you still feel a little uncomfortable with the turn and that's okay as we will continue to work on it to help you get there.
The personal best times that were posted yesterday was great to see and even those that were not best times fell right near your lifetime best. The feedback that I got from you after your races was mostly positive and ran the gamut. The majority of you were happy and we were excited to see those expressions. Some although happy mentioned that their expectations were higher which we completely understand. I would say this to all of you, take a step back and think about how far you have come and the work that was put in to get you back to this point.
An area of your race that can always use improvement are the walls and by that we mean being aggressive in and out of those turns. That's not real fast water around the walls in the first place especially when 8 swimmers are churning it up causing all that turbulence around the walls. To be able to beat that you need to get in, get out as fast as you can in a tight streamline working the fast deep water.
Another area is how aggressively you approach the race. I read an article this morning that reinforces what we have been teaching you for years. When you set expectations that may be high you need together out fast enough to give yourself a chance to meet those expectations. With that, you need to be smart about that first part of your race. This article stated what we have been teaching you for what seems like forever and that is "almost every one slows down on the 3rd 50 of the 200 or 3rd 25 of a 100." Now if you are that one oddball who decides to rock that boat you just might b e in a better position than the rest of the field as you head for home.
SENIOR PREP PRACTICE THURSDAY
What were we trying to accomplish with our test set from last Thursday? It was all about challenging yourself on every repeat and learning out how to race. The coaches are trying to get you to be a little more aggressive during the front part of your races and building as the race evolves. Our GREEN clock was your stop watch as you went through the set and the objective was to swim all out and have consistent times throughout the set. Now if your times were bouncing all over it became obvious that we were either holding back or having a mental block, be it thinking you were tired and you were building in your own rest period. During a race you do get tired and we need to help you get through that both mentally and physically. We will attempt a similar set in a couple of week.
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