I'm about three weeks late posting anything about my first swim meet of the 2019-2020 short course metres season, but I want to chart my progress towards my end-of-season goal: beating my best Masters performance in the 200 metre butterfly. This means I need to go faster than 2:15.35, which I swam in December of 2011, when I was 44 years old.
To that end, on November 10th, I headed out to Guelph, Ontario to compete in the Victoria Recreation Centre's Victor Davis Pool for the Guelph Marlins' Fast & Furious meet:
As any swimmer or swimfan from the 1980s recalls, Victor Davis, a Guelph native, was one of the dominant breaststrokers of the decade, a multi-time World Champion, Olympic gold medalist and world-class contender from the 1982 World Championships through the 1988 Olympics. He was tragically killed at only 25 years old.
As tt would have been near sacrilegious for my breaststroke to be swum in his pool, I settled on a (mostly) all butterfly day - swimming the 25, 50, 100 and 200 fly, along with the 100 freestyle. What my results proved is this - I am glad I have until as late as May to get faster!
25 fly - 13.91 - Technically, this can be a Lifetime best ... since I've never raced it for time before ;)
50 fly - 31.23 - which is my slowest-ever attempt as a Masters swimmer versus a best of 27.62
100 fly - 1:06.59 - another 'Masters slowest' versus a best of 1:00.30 (2010) and even a more recent 1:02.71 (2015)
200 fly - 2:28.72 - This was the last of my 5 events, so I was tired by the time I got to it, but I'm actually pretty happy with this. I had swum a tapered 2:25.69 back in April of 2019, and this was far faster than the 2:32.30 I swam in January 2019.
While my times were not quick, racing was fun and incredibly motivational. On top of it all, my youngest daughter, who is working on getting her driver's license, was my chauffeur for the ~4 hour round trip, during which we had many great conversations.