A lot has hap­pened to me this past week, and I’ve had a ton of mate­r­ial to blog about, but for some rea­son I just couldn’t find the time needed to sit down and write a qual­ity post. How­ever, the week­end is now afoot, and it’s time to write a post about the one thing that I have been look­ing for­ward to all year long, the swim sea­son. For me, the swim sea­son is a time of chal­lenge, ful­fill­ment, dis­ap­point­ment, and adven­ture.  It’s the one time of the year in which I can set a lot of things aside and focus on one thing, and that is being an ath­lete. This year is no excep­tion, and in fact, I expect that I will be expe­ri­enc­ing the tra­di­tional slew of chal­lenge, ful­fill­ment, dis­ap­point­ment, and adven­ture to a much greater degree because this year has the added impor­tance of being my senior year. Obvi­ously, this means, that this could pos­si­bly be my last year as a com­pet­i­tive swimmer…ever.

While most peo­ple approach their senior year with a mix of fear, regret, and nos­tal­gia, I’m approach­ing this last year of swim­ming with a sense of opti­mism, and “balls to the wall” men­tal­ity. I really have no idea why I am tak­ing such an approach to this year’s swim sea­son, my fresh­man year I was ner­vous as hell, my sopho­more and junior years I was filled with high expec­ta­tions for myself (which I hon­estly don’t think I met), but this year I have a more calm, “what­ever hap­pens, hap­pens” kind of men­tal­ity. I sup­pose it can be attrib­uted to a mix of matu­rity, and self con­fi­dence that I think I was lack­ing my last three years of swim­ming, but even if that’s not the case, what­ever it is it feels a lot dif­fer­ent from the ways I have approached swim­ming in the past.

We were sup­posed to hold our first prac­tice on Tues­day of this week but it was can­celed due to a CIF play­off water polo game that was being played. As those who where in my jour­nal­ism class can attest, I was pissed at the news because I was look­ing for­ward to swim prac­tice that whole day. For me, swim prac­tice is a form of escape. For almost 8 months out of the year I swim in a crappy gym pool, which has an aver­age tem­per­a­ture of 85 degrees Fahren­heit, a PH Level prob­a­bly in the 4 or 5 range, and hun­dreds of old Asian peo­ple walk­ing up and down the lanes. The swim sea­son is the one time of year when I can escape the hell, which I call LA Fit­ness, and rise to the heav­ens of Mater Dei aquat­ics which includes  swim­ming  in a real pool, against real swim­mers, and with a real work­out. To deprive me of such a priv­i­lege for just one addi­tional day, was just a heart break­ing thing for me to endure, hence my hissy fit in journalism.

Any­ways, prac­tice started the fol­low­ing day. Like most first prac­tices, we spent a lot of time going over paper work, putting in lane lines, set­ting up the flags, grab­bing kick­boards, etc. While this did take up quite a bit of time, we still had a fairly decent work­out. The first thing that I noticed when I jumped in the water was just how com­fort­able I felt. My body wasn’t over­heat­ing from exces­sive water tem­per­a­tures, my lungs weren’t burn­ing from chlo­rine fumes, and there weren’t any old Asian peo­ple within a square mile of the pool. It felt like a priv­i­lege to be in a nice pool again, but that lasted for all of about a few sec­onds, because after that we started our workout.

My coach gave us a fairly straight­for­ward work­out set. 500 warm up, 5X100 kick, 12X50’s pull, 8X75’s IM Drill, 18X25’s sprint­ing, 1X200, 2X100, 4X50 two times through, and then a warm down. To be hon­est, it was a work­out that I saw com­ing  as we did that con­stantly last year, and thus I had been train­ing for it the whole off sea­son. It wasn’t any­thing that rocked my world, but it was inter­est­ing to note how my body reacted to the sets. The first thing I noticed is just how much stronger my legs are. After Veloc­ity, and a ton of cycling, my legs def­i­nitely showed improve­ment when push­ing off walls and doing kick­ing sets. I was able to make my 5X100’s kick­ing on the 1:45, which is a time that oth­er­wise took me about two weeks of prac­tice to achieve.  When it came to the sprints, I was able to hold a very con­sis­tent time around 15–19 sec­onds, but when it came to actu­ally rac­ing and push­ing myself on those sprints, I had a hard time break­ing 15. Sprint­ing isn’t some­thing that I trained too much for this off sea­son, and it seems as if I almost for­got how to do it. The good thing is that I was much bet­ter at main­tain­ing speeds than the major­ity of the peo­ple that I swam with but when it came to our “test set” which was our 1X200, 2X100’s, 4X50’s, I instantly fell apart. I barely made the inter­val on the first two hun­dred, and after that I was just los­ing speed. My arms felt like they weren’t func­tion­ing and I couldn’t main­tain a solid form at all. So it appears as if my tra­di­tional weak­ness of last­ing at a con­stant pace for long dis­tances is still present, but then again, I didn’t have the yardage in my arms to suc­cess­fully com­plete that kind of set with that inter­val anyways.

What sur­prised me the most was just how good I felt after prac­tice. For some­one who really hasn’t been putting in more than 2,000–3,000 yards a cou­ple of days a week, I thought that I was going to feel absolutely demol­ished, but after a cou­ple of hours I felt ener­gized and wasn’t even that sore. I guess that could be all of my veloc­ity train­ing kick­ing in and help­ing me speed up my rebuild­ing process, which is pretty cool.

The next day we had our place­ment meet, and like every year my clear goal was to make Var­sity. How­ever, I knew going into the meet that I wouldn’t be mak­ing Var­sity off of my own times, because quite frankly, I haven’t been train­ing in a way that pro­motes the speed and stroke refine­ment needed to make Var­sity. This was pretty much the case given my per­for­mance at the meet. I got throt­tled at both of my freestyle events, didn’t do any­thing spe­cial in my breast­stroke event, and while I did man­age to win my back­stroke event against a bunch of under­class­men, my time wasn’t any­thing too spe­cial. Now, I wasn’t too dev­as­tated by this out­come because I knew that I was rac­ing against club swim­mers who were basi­cally at their peaks sans a small one sec­ond drop from all of their times come league finals. I on the other hand, was just start­ing my sea­son and really wasn’t in any posi­tion to take a Var­sity spot unless it was one given to me as a hand­out because I am a senior, and hap­pen to be very ded­i­cated to the pro­gram, in which case, I don’t even con­sider that to be a legit­i­mate Var­sity spot.

Fri­day the teams were posted and I wasn’t too sur­prised to find myself on Prospec­tive Var­sity once again. A lot of peo­ple where pissed at their spots, espe­cially some seniors who where on Var­sity last year, but I hon­estly saw it as a chal­lenge. In my sopho­more and junior years, I felt almost enti­tled to a Var­sity spot, I wanted to be a part of that upper ech­e­lon, even though I wasn’t really pre­pared to push myself and make the sac­ri­fices needed to be on Var­sity. This year, I just want to chal­lenge myself, improve as a swim­mer, break through this plateau that I’ve found myself in, and most impor­tantly, I want to kick some ass. If I hap­pen to make it to Var­sity as a side effect of all that, then it will truly be a dream come true, but right now, I am all about push­ing myself  to be the best swim­mer that I can pos­si­bly be.

With that said, the team’s out­look this year is very bright. We have a new coach, who was an Olympian and par­tic­i­pated in the 2004 Athens games. She has a ton of tech­ni­cal expe­ri­ence which I am sure will do won­ders for every­body on the team. On the boys side all of our teams are stacked. Var­sity is packed with noth­ing but strong swim­mers, who should all be able to place in league finals. JV is absolutely stacked with a ton of strong swim­mers, who could oth­er­wise make Var­sity at other schools. I hon­estly think that our JV team can go toe-to-toe with some school’s var­sity teams, which is awe­some as it means that we will dom­i­nate league. Frosh/Soph is also look­ing very good too. We have a lot of young kids on the team, who aren’t expe­ri­enced swim­mers yet, but they are also lead by some very strong sopho­mores who were on JV last year. Plus, the frosh/soph team will be doing veloc­ity, which should do won­ders for their level of fit­ness. Girls var­sity should also be very strong, we will be lead by four very potent swim­mers, as well as a strong sup­port­ing cast. JV and Frosh/Soph prob­a­bly won’t be that strong, but I hon­estly don’t care that much about girls swim­ming out­side of Varsity.

All in all, I am look­ing for­ward to this sea­son. If every­thing goes accord­ing to plan, we have a very strong shot at win­ning league this year, which will be the first time ever in school his­tory. I per­son­ally, just want to kick ass. I want to be the swim­mer in lane six who no one thinks is going to do any­thing, but comes out of nowhere and just rapes every­one. Soon they will call me the Irish Assas­sin, and I will be known for my deadly speed. That’s the kind of swim­mer that I want to be, and I have every inten­tion of being like that this year.