Advanced Racing Tactics (ASA Nationals day 3) (Oh and not for the squeamish)

Day 3 and my body is proving to me that I still have those basic survival instincts which kick in at swim meets, otherwise known as the "flight fight or sh*te" reflex.

This caused me a moment or two of anxiety this morning in the 100m IM; because an unfortunate upshot of my lack of conditioning is the fact that I've put on about 8lbs in weight since June.

I've already waxed lyrical about the spacial difficulties encountered in stuffing my ample frame into a racing suit see this.

Well the additional handfuls of flesh made donning this critical bit of kit extraordinarily tricky. Trying to roll the unyielding polyamide over the very flabby bits is really painful and difficult and you end up with friction burns on the inside of your thumbs as you try to work some space between flesh and fabric.

But having eventually succeeded I wandered onto the pool deck, now what is it about competitions that means no matter how short the period since you last visited the loo, the impending effort immediately means you want to go again? Figuring that I had time and that being lighter might improve my competitive edge (yes I was getting pretty desperate at this stage *); I slipped into the ladies room, big mistake, apart from the pain of removing the infernal suit, the temperature in the ladies was akin to a sauna and the sweaty struggle with the suit just contributed to the difficulty, talk about slick.

I escaped to marshalling with seconds to spare, and figured that I'd just endured a pretty tough warm up, but alas it didn't seem to help my IM as 4 lengths was about 77.5 metres too far... Oh Well there's always next year!

100 IM 1.25.28
100 swim down
100 breast 1.29.78
150 swim down (really went for it here!)

* (in more ways than one)

Oh and finally thanks to Nic Latty for immortalising my world masters 50 breast on  You Tube!