Day 3 - One session (Minn Grand Prix)

Frederico Burgwardt, and his adoring fans.

Autograph time:

Once again, 5-time Olympic Gold Medalist Missy Franklin was busy warming up and actually swimming this morning, so she could not sign autographs for the assembled innocent kids. Luckily, Frederico Burgwardt (GCOM), made himself available once again today to sign for the kids. What a gentlemen, and the kids were sure happy too. Another funny moment among many this weekend.

Swimming:

Today started off pretty rough. It was a LONG day yesterday and the kids were a little late for breakfast even, which is usually never a good sign. This early in the season, 3-day meets for swimmers from our area are NOT the norm, so we struggled a bit with stamina. This is somewhat to be expected but not to be used as an excuse. We trudged over to the pool and went through the motions of warm-up but we all just could not generate the energy needed to swim where we needed to. We had 4 individual events today. 3 in the 200 IM (Jeff, Matt and Tommy) and 1 in the 200 Ba (Matt).

First up was the 200 IM's, and Tommy, who was nursing a bit of a groin tug all weekend. He got out to a great start in the first 100 at 56.26. His groin held him up a bit in the breast and he somewhat struggled on his way to a 2:00.45. Not bad, but he was hoping for something a little better. Considering his groin, as coaches, we could not be disappointed.

Next came Matt and Jeff, a true showdown race if we ever had one. Both were paired up next to each other in the final heat of the event (heat 8). Jeff was in lane 1 and Matt was in lane two. Both got out to decent starts, but in the end, it wasn't all that much of a race as Matt pulled away in the breaststroke and raced his way to an easy win at 1:55.17 to Jeff's 1:57.48. The last swim of the weekend was Jeff in the 200 Back about 20 minutes later. Given the tone of the day so far, we did not expect much, and we weren't disappointed. Jeff struggled to a 1:58. 28. A fairly inglorious end to an otherwise very good meet.

Taking stock of the whole weekend. We really could not be disappointed as we had a 5 lifetime bests out of 17 swims. For an early season November meet, that is actually pretty darn good considering that several other swims were right at their lifetime best as well. I think that overall, we had hoped for some nice swims here and there, and that is exactly what we got and then some. I think the swimmers might not agree, but they sometimes look a little to deeply at times alone, verses realistic expectation though. We did have discussions to this effect and overall, I think we all will leave this meet with a very positive outlook on our training to date and what it tells us about what we need to do to move forward the rest of the way.

We certainly had a great time hanging out together and bonding as a group. This was a very fun group to hang out with and we all, coaches and swimmers, enjoyed each others presence. We'll have to schedule another one of these meets soon.

Matt, Erick, Jeff and Tommy on the way out. 

Great weekend.