Day 2 - Prelims (Minn Grand Prix)

Tommy, getting ready to swim

a 100 Fr Time Trial

Day 2 - Prelims

Another 6:45 AM wake-up and it was back to the pool for another session. Today, we had swims in the 200 Fly (2), 50 Fr (1), 100 Back (2) and 200 Br (1), along with a few TT's.

Results by swimmer:

Matt Tanchick - Continues to have an awesome meet and today started off great in the 200 fly with a 1:54.13 (new team record), a lifetime best time by almost 4 seconds and good enough to get him into the B Final. Matt's next race was several hours later was the 200 Breast. Matt is a breaststroker, but has never really put together a very good 200 race to date. With some confidence from the 200 Fly, Matt decided to take it out aggressively, which he did by going out in a 1:01. He paid the price in the final 100, but managed to swim a 2:09.48, which was a very respectable swim and a lifetime best by 5 seconds.

Jeff Williamson - Jeff struggled to get going a bit in his first race, the 200 Butterfly, but still managed to go a respectable 1:56.34. Good enough for the C Final and he expects to go significantly faster in finals, which is typical for him. His next two races were, like last night, back to back. In fact, all three races occurred within a 45 minute period. Not exactly optimal for performance. Jeff was able to go 22.18 in the 50 Free, which is off his best of 21.4, but good enough to sneak back into the D Final. The Backstroke was a struggle with a 54.1, but we couldn't expect much coming off 2 tough swims a few minutes before. We expect much better tonight.

Erick Burgwardt - Erick was swimming in the 100 Back and choose to do a 100 Fly time trial. In the 100 Back, he went a 55.83, which was a lifetime best by almost a second. A great swim for him. In the 100 Fly Time Trial, he died a bit coming home and went a 57.0, which is about a second slower then his best. All in all, pretty good swimming for this time of year.

Tommy Kirch - Tommy, just had a time trial today in the 100 Free and went a 48.35, which is about .35 seconds faster then his lifetime best. Considering he had 2 turns that were a little iffy, this was a very good swim. Remember, early in the season, it's easy to make a mistake or two so working through them at meets like this is crucial to success later in the year. I think, all of us (his coaches, Tommy and his teammates) all think that the 100 Free might be a very good event for him down the stretch after this race.

Overall, a very nice morning session with some great swims, some good ones and some that we know we can improve on. We're all feeling pretty good about our performances to this point.