So since my last Tri in September I've been swimming 5-6 days a week in an attempt to strengthen my biggest weakness. 'Easy' it hasn't been but after 5 months the culmination of this was the 1500m North West Masters champs in Blackpool on Sunday. A proper swim meet with proper swimmers and unfortunately no running involved.
So at 7am I rolled out into the car and headed off (the usual 30 minutes late) for the swim meet. After red lining Rosie's Micra up the M6 I arrived just in time to meet up with Chris, Toby, Tracy and Les from Chester Ti who were all racing the 1500 as well.
If you haven't raced in a swim meet before it involves a 45 minute open pool warm up followed by hours of waiting where you cool down again! I have to say the Blackpool pool was the best indoor 25m pool I've swam in. The floor at the shallow end of the pool is hydraulic and lowered for the day with timing mats hanging over the end of each lane to automatically record the time of each 50. Very cool. (I'm easily impressed)
There were 6 heats with the slowest first, I was snuck into the the 5th heat racing against 7 other swimmers with predicted times of between 19m 59s to 22minutes. I was targeting sub 21 minutes which meant I had to average under 1 minute 24 seconds per 100m.
My race soon came around and before I new it I was on the blocks being told to take my mark. An electronic buzzer fired and we were off. 60 lengths to go. Chris Malpas had advised me just before the start not to swim the first 100 too fast so I purposefully held back to find myself in last place at 100m. Turns out I had it spot on and I actually swam 1:17 for the first 100 which was faster than I thought. I then settled into 1.25 100s for the next 600m. By 300m I had caught up a couple of slower swimmers who had gone off too fast and had nicely settled into my pace.
One of my worries before the race was loosing count of which length I was on but I needn't of worried as at the end of every 50 a card was turned counting down from 60 to 0.
By 700m I felt I had broken the back of the race and picked up the pace. It was one of those funny increases in pace where you put in more effort but as your more tired it equals out at the same time! It did the job though and my 100m times dipped below the 1.25 mark. (not that I had a clue at the time). With 100m to go I started sprinting and as I hit the timing pad for the last time I looked up the see 20.56. Job done.
Splits are below. Looking back I think I got the pacing spot on.
| DISTANCE | TIME | 50 SPLIT | 100M SPLIT |
| 50 | 37.72 | ||
| 100 | 01:17.9 | 40.15 | 01:17.9 |
| 150 | 01:59.7 | 00:41.8 | |
| 200 | 02:40.9 | 00:41.2 | 01:23.0 |
| 250 | 03:22.5 | 00:41.6 | |
| 300 | 04:04.5 | 00:42.0 | 01:23.7 |
| 350 | 04:47.3 | 00:42.8 | |
| 400 | 05:29.6 | 00:42.3 | 01:25.1 |
| 450 | 06:12.1 | 00:42.4 | |
| 500 | 06:54.7 | 00:42.6 | 01:25.0 |
| 550 | 07:37.7 | 00:43.0 | |
| 600 | 08:19.6 | 00:41.9 | 01:25.0 |
| 650 | 09:01.8 | 00:42.2 | |
| 700 | 09:44.6 | 00:42.8 | 01:25.0 |
| 750 | 10:26.2 | 00:41.6 | |
| 800 | 11:08.4 | 00:42.2 | 01:23.7 |
| 850 | 11:50.3 | 00:41.9 | |
| 900 | 12:32.6 | 00:42.3 | 01:24.2 |
| 950 | 13:15.1 | 00:42.6 | |
| 1000 | 13:57.1 | 00:41.9 | 01:24.5 |
| 1050 | 14:39.6 | 00:42.5 | |
| 1100 | 15:22.2 | 00:42.6 | 01:25.2 |
| 1150 | 16:04.4 | 00:42.2 | |
| 1200 | 16:46.4 | 00:42.0 | 01:24.2 |
| 1250 | 17:28.9 | 00:42.5 | |
| 1300 | 18:11.3 | 00:42.4 | 01:24.9 |
| 1350 | 18:53.3 | 00:42.0 | |
| 1400 | 19:35.8 | 00:42.5 | 01:24.5 |
| 1450 | 20:17.2 | 00:41.4 | |
| 1500 | 20:56.9 | 00:39.7 | 01:21.1 |
Next up is Dambuster duathlon in 2 weeks so I'm currently throwing in some last minute panick biking but I'll talk about that another time.
