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A few days ago, I noticed that the 2006 Sectional times are way faster than they were last year. The 14 year-old 50 free is now 24.99, the 100 free is 53.89, the 200 free is 1:57.99, etc. Everything is several seconds faster, and now I only have one Sectional time: the 200 fly. Nooooooooo! Not that there’s anything wrong with the 200 fly. In fact I like the 200 fly. But I used to have four or five Sectional times. I asked Kate about it, and she said they take the average of everyone’s times at the last Sectional meet and make those the new Sectional times.
But the good news is that the Zone times didn’t really get any faster. People must have swam really fast at Sectionals, and were still tired from it at Zones.

My events today were the 200 medley relay, 200 fly, 200 back and 100 free.

Our relay consisted of Eric (back), Adam (breast), me (fly) and Raymond (free), in that order. We weren’t really expecting to do very well because Adam had to swim his worst stroke while Eric swam backstroke (instead of Adam swimming backstroke), but we did pretty well. We got 1st, and we were only two seconds off a Sectional time. I think our time was 2:04. My split for the 50 fly was 28.2.

In the 200 fly I got 2:21.99, a seven second improvement (from my last short course time; my converted time from long course is 2:23). I think I also got a Sectional time by six or seven seconds. John was happy because my last two 50’s were the same split: 36.8.
I got 3rd place.

In the 200 back, I got 2:18.52, and 2nd place. My old time was 2:21, so I improved three seconds. I also got a Sectional time by one second.

I got 55.96 in the 100 free. I just missed a Sectional time by .17 second, but I dropped 33 hundredths of a second. I got 4th place.

I’ve decided I’m more a mid-distance person than a sprinter.

I swam the 50 free, 200 free, and 100 fly today.

In the 50 free, I got 25.19. I dropped a little over a quarter of a second. I also won the event. John said I could have gotten a 24.9 if I hadn’t breathed into the wall though…

I got 2:00.90 in the 200 free, which is a two second improvement. I got 2nd place. The guy who won got 1:55.

In the 100 fly, I got 1:03.1. I lowered my old time by one second, and I got 3rd place.

Tomorrow I’ll be swimming the 100 free, 200 back and 200 fly.

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I got to hold a video iPod in person yesterday! It belonged to one of the ECSC people. It’s thinner than I thought, and really light. It also has a really nice screen.

Since Kate is at the Husky meet at UW (and I don’t know where John is), we didn’t have a coach for warmups today. Instead, Kristen Quirk, the ECSC coach, was supervising our warmup. Tim came when the meet started.

I swam the 500 free today. I got 5:25, lowering my old time from four weeks ago by nine seconds. A Sectional time is 5:30. I think I also won the event.
The guy next to me was Corey Williams, from RST. I was right with him (and everyone else) for the first 200 or so, then I got just a tiny bit ahead of him. I was about to pull back, thinking I was starting out too fast, then I remembered Kate yelling at me for pulling back and losing my race at the last meet, so I decided to try to stay with him. When I got a little farther ahead, it made me want to go faster, and then I beat him by about six seconds.

I’m just happy I won a (somewhat) distance event.

Aargh! When will it be winter here? It’s getting warmer!

If there are any Cocoa developers who read my blog, please take a look at the question I posted here, here and here.

UPDATE: I asked Drew Hamlin about my problem, and helped me solve it! It turned out to be something really simple. Thanks Drew!