Last summer I decided to swim in the FINA Masters World
Championships (long course meters) held in August 2006 at Stanford
University. Normally I wouldn't have even considered
traveling to such a big meet, but I had just been asked to speak at a
Sports Medicine conference that was accompanying the World
Championships so why not? Never being a good long course
swimmer I was not anticipating that I would place very high. I
had eight weeks to prepare and I trained pretty hard with
the Sun Devil Master's swim team, averaging 4 days a week and 2500-3000
meters per day. Wow, it paid off! I did great, placing 18th (out of
105) in
the 50 m breaststroke (:35.4) and 19th (out of 90) in the 100 m
breaststroke (1:20.5). I scratched the 200 because I couldn't
stay six days at the meet. I am sorry that I scratched that race
because I believe I would have placed 14th (out of 70) in that event
with an approximate time of 2:55. To put these times into
perspective, my lifetime best times (from 1974, the summer after junior
year at Oberlin College) are 1:14 in the 100 and 2:43 in the 200. My
goals for the next time I swim these long course races are to break
35 in the 50, break 1:20 in the 100, and break 2:55 in the 200. If can
maintain or improve on my long course times before the next
world championships in 2008 I have a shot at making the top 10 in each
breaststroke event in the 55-59 age group. That is my goal. The only
problem is that the 2008 Worlds Championships will be held in
Perth, Australia. Am I that serious of a swimmer to travel around
the world to swim in a meet? I'll have to think hard about that
one.
Here are three photos taken by my wife, Debbe Simpkins, at the meet on
Saturday, August 5 during the few minutes leading up to my 50-m
breaststroke race.
Photo 1
Photo 1
shows a
wide shot of the men's competition pool at Stanford (further to the
right was another 50-m pool for the women's events). There were 11
heats of the 50-m breaststroke for men 50-54 years old. The times shown
on the scoreboard show the results for heat 9. I swam in heat 10
(second fastest heat).
Photo 2
Photo 2
shows
my heat as we prepared for the start. I'm the 3rd lane from the top
(lane 8 out of 10). I wore a black Speedo Fastskin bodysuit for this
race with a white Arizona Masters swim cap. It was one of the suits
used in our bodysuit research study.
Photo
3
Photo 3 shows the glide just
after entry
in the start. If you look
carefully I have a lead of several inches over my nearest competitor,
with my fingertips extending beyond the flags and beyond the blue lines
on the bottom of the pool.
This is the first meet I have used a "track
start" for my races and it appears to have been a success! It was not a
"rear-weighted" track start nor a "front weighted" track start, but
rather a "mid-weighted" track start. For me, leaning back slightly so
as to get a good hand pull on the block (but not too far back so as to
extend my time on the block) felt the most comfortable and fastest of
all the variations of the track start that I tried. Rob Welcher, if
others have success like mine with this mid-weighted track start, we
are going to have to re-think our recommendations for the best start
(based on our research we thought the rear-weighted track [or
slingshot] start was the best)!