Meet preparation takes many different shapes, and comes at you in your own individual forms and at different times. Instead of waiting for the day of a meet to make a plan, we encourage you all to make a plan in advance of the meet.
Of course one of the first items to check off is what’s in your swim bag, 2 pairs of goggles, extra caps, and of course an extra suit. An extra towel and sweatshirt is always nice to snuggle in and stay warm during the meet.
When this meet appeared on our calendar, we decided to look at it as a training meet. This being said what we are looking for as coaches is being able to put together what we have been doing in practice and applying it to your races. What this all means is that we are looking for great underwater’s (5 second rule), our middle 50’s, our 3rd 25’s and of course our overall approach and the total efforts put into the races.
For your part we would like you over the next few days it would be great if you could sit down and write your 2 or 3 events down on a piece of events. Write down a specific goal that you would like to accomplish in each event. Now some of you may put down a “ time” and that’s okay, it’s human nature, but if you are that one we would like you to be a little more specific. What that means is, how are you going to get to that time. Is it working your walls, or maybe your going to work the middle of the race a little more. Whatever it is I think the message is pretty clear, you can’t just throw a time out there, you need a plan of how to get there. Just something to think about.
When you step up onto the block there is nothing more you can do, but race. You have trained and planned for this moment and now all that’s left to do is execute your plan. At this point have fun with it, all of your teammates will pick up on your energy and be in your corner along with your coaches. You deserve to have fun so enjoy the moment and just race to the best of your ability.
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