[Breeze]

South Pole Meet Results

Bear

Day 1

200 Free - came in with a 2:36.11, finished with a personal best 2:35.48. His freestyle is looking much stronger now that he has added a bit of a glide to the stroke. Splits were:

35.95
39.45 (1:13.59)
40.18 (1:55.88)
39.90 (2:35.48)

100 IM - In this race Bear was right next to his friend on the team that just out-touched him in the 200 IM in the meet in Tennessee. This time they were practically even at the first turn...but Bear opened about a half second lead in the back. Then in the turn to the breast, Jack tried to do a bucket turn, but wasn't close enough to the wall and he fell a couple of body length's back. Bear swam a strong Breast, and finsihed strong to post a personal best 1:23.80...his fly/back split was 38.75, the breast/free split was 45.05.

50 Back - Bear got a terrible start, late off the wall, and really really deep (the kid really likes the underwater work, and he's strong with it, but in this case he over did it badly). This put him behind. Then to make matters worse, he botched his turn...he ended up off on his count and was on the wrong arm when he flipped...ultimately he posted a 39.77...

50 Free - Bear closed with a strong 50 free, dropping his time over a full second to 32.46...

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Day 2

100 Back - again another bad, start. Slow and deep, costs him. The first couple of turns were good, the 3rd was horrible...and it costs him in time as well, but even with all that his improved form and strength shine through with a personal best 1:22.00

100 Fly - Bear and Jack were right next to each other again, and again they really pushed each other. Bear had the lead at the 50 by just over .2 seconds swimming a 40.92, but in the back half Jack closed hard in the last 25 and beat Bear by .6...Bear posted a personal best 1:26.59

200 IM - This event was a little irriating to me. The coach really wanted Bear to focus on the 500 free (and as I mentioned in the pre-race write up it was only going to be about 15 minutes after the 200), and so she told him to just swim the event easy. My thought was, either have him not swim or swim hard. By swimming easy all he'll do is race a 200 at a moderate rate, still fatigue his muscles and adversely impact his 500...he still managed to swim a 3:06.52...

500 Free - Bear started out fine, then went conservative, then really picked it up. Here are his splits...

37.14
41.42 (1:18.56)
41.82 (2:00.38)
40.98 (2:41.36)
41.63 (3:22.99)
41.56 (4:04.55)
40.02 (4:44.57)
39.51 (5:24.08)
39.74 (6:03.82)
37.83 (6:41.65)

The most amazing thing to me is that he did this 15 minutes after swimming a 200 IM and his last 200 of this 500, he swam in 2:37.10...his opening 200 was 2:41.36, and his 200 Free time from day 1 was 2:35.48...he swam the last 200 only about 1.5 seconds slower than his 1st event on the 1st day...

Edit to note: Also this is an improvement of almost 30 seconds...


So 8 swims, 6 Personal Bests, 1 drop, and 1 coaches decision to coast