While I can almost always wish I had swum faster, I had a pretty perfect day at the Downtown Swim Club's All-Out Swim meet, hosted long course at the Varsity Pool at the University of Toronto:
I got to swim two of my favorite events - the 200 fly and 400 IM - and managed not to die on either of them,
The schedule worked out perfectly to pop out for a lovely lunch with my second daughter, Monica, who happened to be up from Hamilton for the weekend,
I left motivated to continue my progress towards my end of the season (May) goals at the Canadian Masters Nationals
And even more excited to see how I'll do on those events in Short Course Metres in a couple of weeks at the Steven Forsey Invitational
200 fly - I was damn scared to attempt this in long course and my fears were warranted. If anything taught me that I need to work further on my conditioning, it was this. My time wasn't horrible at 2:34.71, about a second slower than the last time I swam it ... back in 2016 ... but I was impersonating a T-rex by the end ...
400 IM - The two+ hour break allowed me to power up like a millenial with Avocado Toast at Flock's Harbord location, and get energized by Monica's enthusiasm. I was more ambitious taking out the fly than I probably should have been ... because I pretty much gasped for air throughout the backstroke, and was still so out of breath that I couldn't do an underwater pullout to start the breaststroke. I think I had finally calmed my heart down at about the 275 mark, and turned in a respectable enough 5:21.00. Like a lot of my racing during this "comeback" of sorts, this was the slowest time I've ever done in Masters ... but it was "less slow" than I expected, so I'll take that as a win.
50 free - Because you need a lark of a race every so often, I entered this. Contrary to all sprinting advice, I breathed practically every stroke, but my 28.65 was only 1.5 seconds off the best I have ever swum (all the way back in 2013).
100 fly - While I should have been super-tired by this point, my endurance held up and I swam a 1:07.82 on this, which was much better than expectations and converts to a faster SCM time than I did in November.