Highlands Ranch Swim Meet

For people who complain about having to get wet to start their workouts, swimmers are an amazingly hearty breed when it comes to braving the winter elements to get to a meet. The roads were a mess Saturday morning, and the snow was coming down with gusto...yet almost all of the registered competitors showed up at the Highlands Ranch Masters Swim Meet bright and early Saturday morning.

I was still a bit tired from running the Green Mountain trail on Friday. That had been an excellent run on a surprisingly pleasant morning, but it did leave me with un-springy legs for Saturday's swimming. No big deal; I had no delusions of achieving any speed at this meet.

And since I won't be tapering before the State Meet in two weeks, I don't expect to go any faster there. Why? Because with the marathon rapidly approaching, I just can't afford to back off on my training. Swim meets for me this year are about having fun with my friends and teammates...not about setting any personal records.

Perhaps when I change age groups...

Anyway, the HR pool is a nice one, with a continuous warmup lane, a diving well, and a hot tub. (Well, OK, it's a "lukewarm" tub, but at least there was a place to restore your body heat after your races.) The problem was that you could lose 20 degrees of your heat just by looking out the window -- the snow continued to pile up throughout the meet.

The fellow in the picture here sat motionless the entire time I was in the building. Kinda creeped me out at first, but I got used to him by the time the meet was over.

I swam about as I expected. Didn't feel great -- didn't feel horrible. Paced things fairly well, but am still having a problem adjusting to the fact that I'm just not as fast as I was in high school. Oh well.

I was able to take a few photos. This dude is the 68-year-old phenom Richard Abrahams. He and I had another grudge match scheduled in the 200 freestyle, but he was on the other side of the pool and I couldn't even see if he showed up for the event, much less whether he beat me or not. I'll have to check out the results once they're posted.

I had three different events that were moved up a heat because they combined us with the women to save time. I don't object to that at all, but when you think you have time for one more potty stop, and suddenly hear that they're calling your name to get you to the blocks, well -- it messes with your focus. I doubt that swimming in the heats as scheduled would make any difference in my race times, but it was just a tad bit more embarrassing to be lapped in the 200 fly heat by both a man AND a woman. Oh well. The way I look at it is that since there were only two males in the race, I can tell my friends that I took second place while he was next-to-last.

My favorite photo is the one I'll leave you with. If they gave points for style, Mike would definitely win the gold.

Anyway, since it's proposal crunch time, I'll have to put in extra hours at the office this week. I apologize for the ongoing lack of bloggery. Next week should be better. In the meantime, enjoy all those lovely white flakes of global warming, and have a great day!