Fast, Faster, Fastest

Whoa, look out Beijing, here comes your fastest swimming yet...

It was an interesting day at the MavREC center pool yesterday. I hadn't seen my lightening fast swim buddy (LFSB) for a week or so and we were catching up before practice. I showed up in my red suit which just happened to compliment the red shoulders and chest I had from my bike ride on Saturday and my tapered long run on Sunday. I also am presenting with super stylish cycling short tan lines already. Yes, thank you, I am taking my bow now. Anywho, we started talking about cycling and LFSB, who is so fast in the water you can hardly see him as he goes by was also quite the cyclist a few years back. I said, "it was a pretty good ride, I only cried a little tiny bit once!"
To that he looked astonished and said, "there's no crying in triathlon". He said, "when you see a cyclist go by who is crying, you would never say, 'there goes a triathlete!'" Funny guy, I know. =0)
I explained it's not that Patrick drops me with no effort (at all), it is that I can't keep up. I just can't ride any faster. We passed a guy and Patrick jumped in front of me and he was gone. I maintained for a bit but when I looked down and saw that we were riding 24 mph I knew that I wouldn't be able to hold that pace. Especially since I still had to ride 20 miles home into the crazy Nebraska wind.
To this LFSB says, just tell Mr KT that I have been sandbagging in the pool for a year and a half if it makes him feel better. Really?! I didn't know whether to laugh or be furious or a little bit of both. I suppose I will have to resign myself to the fact that he is telling the truth. Damn, the truth hurts.
So, practice was practice. Bunch of IMs, some free, some other stuff, you know... and then I get a wild hair to see how fast my 25 fly is. So I swim down, climb up on the blocks and LFSB starts his stopwatch on the first movement. I dive in, fly to the other end with a nice undulating motion and apparently too many breaths. Anywho, after we get that all straightened out I end up with a 16.5 sec 25 yd fly. And then LFSB, who has a beautiful butterfly stroke pulls out a 12.5 fly! Wow. Now that is so cool. Then I decide to see how my 50 free is coming. 32.62 sec off the blocks but I got a huge gulp of pool water one stroke before the flip turn and I was more worried about trying not to drown than my streamline. I think I could be a second or two faster!

So, that doesn't say much about the 500 I am swimming this weekend in the first triathlon of the season but we'll see how it all pans out. Can you say, brrrr!