By Paul Tenorio

Diving Back In Archive

Follow Paul Tenorio on Twitter

Well, I guess I got that out of my system.

As I wrote yesterday, one of the biggest things worrying me going into this weekend’s October Open was that it had been a while since I had raced a 100 and I was nervous about that race particularly. Because the burn of the race was a bit unfamiliar to me, I was worried about whether I could pace it right or whether I’d fly and die and all sorts of things.

My coach, Jeff King, cured that problem this morning in practice.

The session was spent preparing us meet-style for a race. We started by all warming up in one lane — a preview of what was to come this weekend when all Curl-Burke swimmers have three lanes in which to warm-up.

It was, to say the least, an interesting experience. We were told to do 10 50s. Each 50 ended up being about a 32. By the time we flipped at the wall and took three strokes people were standing and waiting in a long line to get back to the wall.

I guess it’s a good thing I’m just doing a 50 and 100 if that’s how warm-up is going to be.

After that experiment, one Jeff said was “fun for me because not everything’s about you,” we spread out to all the lanes and did an actual warm-up of 10 more 50s.

Then we did breath control: 20 25s of zero breath with paddles on on a 40-second interval. Then we worked on starts, three of them to be specific. On the first you worked on just the breakout, then eased up, then you sprinted 12.5 and eased up and on the final one it was a full 25 sprint to the feet.

As we walked back around the pool to the starting blocks everyone had a feeling of what was next to come: a race of some sort.

We got back and that’s exactly what it was: a 100.

As much as I was a bit nervous about what I would do, I also knew it would be a valuable experience for me going into Saturday’s race. I needed to go through a 100 just to get the feel for it again and mentally get the rep and experience so that I could learn from whatever mistakes were inevitably bound to happen.

All in all, I was actually pretty happy with my splits. I went a 29 in the first 50 and came in at 1:03. Considering I breathed coming out of both the second and third wall, a no-no, and was trying to figure out the right pace and keep my stroke perfect it wasn’t bad.

My hope, with a competition suit and my this-is-the-real-deal adrenaline flowing fully on Saturday, is to come in around 1:00.00 in the meet. Going under a minute is the goal, but I’m not going to set myself up for “failure.”

In other words, for this meet it’s about getting it right, not necessarily crushing it time-wise. If I can come in at 1:00.00, plus or minus two seconds, I’ll consider it a success because it probably means I went out in around 28.5 and came back around 31-32.

Again, though, I think what was most important was re-familiarizing myself with the 100 race in general. The last time I swam a 100 for time was Day 18…Aug. 6. That’s a long time ago. I went 1:22.10 in the 100 that day (in a meter pool) and 36.0 in the 50.

Yikes.

Looking at those times it makes me feel a lot better about the most recent times I’ve had in both races. Tomorrow brings another day of practice and yet another chance to try to keep my mind off of Saturday. We’ll see how that goes.

For now, I’m just trying not to think about my races per the advice of Zack Wise and Jeff and I’ll postpone any nerves until the weekend.

Washington Post reporter Paul Tenorio will train with a swim club over the next few months and chronicle his journey as he attempts to transform from regular guy/sports reporter to competitive swimmer — everything from his waistline to his best times.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 15th, 2009 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Diving Back In. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.