23 February 2025
On Saturday the 15th of February, I went up to the 1st Hemel Hempstead Masters meet at the surprisingly fast (at least according to me and my three Barnet Copthall teammates) Everyone Active pool there. The main competition pool (now pool #717) is a six-lane, 25-meter course with fairly narrow lanes and not too deep (1.2M to 1.9M), but they also had a great four-lane, 20-meter “Flexi-Pool” (now pool #718) open throughout the sessions for continuous warmups and cool-downs, which proved vital to my performance.
Leading up to the meet, IRL and on Facebook, I’d been discussing with one of our coaches, Adam Baldwin, and others how I’ve always needed a lot of warming up, especially during “mid-season” meets, to be able to race well. Through those, Adam described his “chaos theory”
The warm-up does serve to 'organise' the 'chaos theory' that tries to explain why the body is unable to fully synchronise at first time of trying. Evidence backs this up. For example, try doing 3 sets of heavy-ish weights in the gym. The first set is hard, but the second set feels so much easier by comparison. By the third set, you feel you need to load on more weights! In weightlifting, world records are never set on the first lift. It's good to look at a warm-up as 'synching' up the many complex processes that charge athletic performance.
I took this to heart and tried to synchronise over three warmups:
“Prelims” Warmup – as warmups for the session started at 2pm for me, with my first race diving in right around 3pm, I decided to swim the first ~30 minutes of our teams’ Saturday 8AM workout kind of like a prelims session. That consisted of a 1,000 stretch out variety followed by 16 x 25 IMs on 0:35, where I either built the 25s to fast or just swam them fast. I then did an easy 100 and got out.
Main pool warmup part 1 – Because of the weird (my word) way they structure warmups here in the UK, I only had 15 minutes in the main competition pool. Knowing that I wanted to rev my heart rate, I include three dive start fast 25s fly in the 650 meters I was able to do.
Flexi pool warmup part 2 – Fortunately, I was then able to move over to the Flexi pool and do another 600 meters, which included some hard kicking and pace 60s.
I felt like I was warmed up enough; I felt like I had done enough really fast stuff to get my heartrate up and muscles synchronized.
200 IM
Masters Best – 2:16.10 (2011, age 44)
55+ Best – 2:22.17 (2022, Canadian Masters Nationals)
UK Best – 2:30.20 (March 2024)
Result – 2:27.12
Reaction – I really wanted this to be my best event of the day. It was pretty good, notably faster than I went last year, but the way my body felt on the second half of the race told me that I had not, in fact, warmed up hard enough. I’m happy enough with the time, but I thought I could be in the 2:25 range. C’est la vie.
100 Fly
Masters Best – 1:00.30 (2010, age 43)
55+ Best – 1:07.41 (March 2024)
UK Best – 1:07.41 (March 2024)
Result – 1:04.98
Reaction – Having the Flexi-Pool available was awesome because immediately following the 200 IM, I did my favorite cool-down set (modified for the pool length) of 8 x 60 where I start pretty strong and then ascend in pairs. This active cool-down always seems to loosen me up and it proved to work wonders for the 100 fly. There were only 19 heats of the 50 freestyle after the IM finished, so maybe 30 minutes elapsing between races. When I arrived on the blocks for the fly, my heartrate was down, but I could still feel a lot of warmth in my muscles. I dove in and everything just clicked. My plan was to swim the first 50 smooth and then build the second 50. The race almost felt like it got easier as it went on: no chaos, all sychronicity. I knew I had had a good swim, but I was dumbfounded by the time. Back in December of 2021, at a taper and shave meet in the USA, I had gone 1:05.10, so this was an excellent performance. If cursing excitedly after a race was a disqualifiable reason, this time would not be in the official results. ;)
100 Breast
Masters Best – 1:14.39 (2014, age 47)
55+ Best – 1:19.68 (May 2024)
UK Best – 1:19.68 (May 2024)
Result – 1:18.08
Reaction – I don’t swim this race as often as the 100 fly, so my time history isn’t that robust. I also still haven’t practiced as much breaststroke as fly, so my only goal was the beat the time from last year, which I did handily enough. I was a bit long on the finish into the wall, which likely prevented me from getting under 1:18, but I was happy enough. Another indicator that I was nice and ready to race, though, was to compare my legs in this race versus the breaststroke leg of the 200 IM. In the IM, my legs were burning and felt like they almost failed, whereas in this race they felt strong throughout.
All in all, this was an excellent session of racing, with one great race and two solid races. I learned (or re-learned because I’m thick sometimes) just how much harder I need to push myself in warmups to be ready to go.
And, beyond the pool, I got to hang out with teammates Cate, Phil and Keith, cheer them onto their good swims and just generally have a rollicking good Saturday afternoon.
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