I was overall pretty happy with how the meet went in Missouri this past weekend. Saturday night, I swam both the 100 and 200 Breast in the A finals and was on my goal times for both. I finished up with an eighth place finish in the 100 going 1:03.93 (out in 29.93) which is one of my fastest in-season times. I finished off the night with a fourth place finish in the 200 breast in a 2:19.45 taking it out much faster like I promised in a 31.34 and 1:07.33 at the 100. Both of these times were encouraging for me and rank me in the top 25 in the world early on in the 2011 season where I hope to stay in those rankings.

Sunday, I got to swim the 200 IM in an A final after some scratches which rarely happens for me anymore since I have focused on breaststroke mainly after college. But I swam to a seventh place finish in a 2:10.19 which was alright for me too. I will look to improve on these performances at the next Grand Prix meet in Indianapolis on March 3-5. So stay tuned for more updates concerning this as it approaches.

Shout-outs:
No. 2 Stanford men’s swimming completes perfect dual meet season with upset win over No. 1 Cal
Video of the 400 free relay that decided the meet won by Stanford by .08!

Calgary hosts the CIS Championships this weekend at the University of Calgary. Live results here

I am not sure why the results page isn’t working, so I thought I would keep people updated on the morning action. I went a 2:21.04 this morning in the 200 Breast to win my seeded heat. That qualified me around 7th this morning with a bunch of guys around 2:20 and 2:21. I almost negative split my race splitting 35’s on my last two 50. I should be out much faster tonight to say the least.

I will be swimming in two A finals tonight with the 100 breast re-swim going off right at 5:30 CT and the 200 breast A final going off probably around 8:00 CT. Should be some good racing!!

I just wanted to write a quick update on the meet so far and 100 Breast finals since there is probably some error when trying to review the results right now. I qualified 8th after the morning with a 1:04.62 to sneak into finals tonight. In finals from lane 8, I went a 1:04.12 (30.02, 34.10) and finished 7th in a fast heat. I was overall satisfied with my time, but have some small things to work on to go out under 30 and go a 1:03, but luckily I will have another chance.

Marcus Titus, who swam at Arizona and is represented by Tucson Ford Aquatics, was in lane one for finals. Marcus is a great swimmer who I have swum against many times throughout college and at NCAAs. He has also accomplished all of his success while competing with a severe hearing impairment. Tonight, as they blew the whistle for us to get on the blocks and take our marks, the officials did not do the proper deaf hand signals for Marcus to take his marks. The officials then set off the beeper for us to go while Marcus was not ready, and therefore he did not dive in and swim the race. The officials, instead of stopping the race right away since one of the swimmers did not dive in, let the race go on as planned. I did not know any of this had gone on until about 30 minutes after the race and just figured Titus had been disqualified since I was on the other side of the pool. The officials were totally at fault here and admitted it after the session was over tonight. As a result, they are allowing Marcus to swim the 100 breast again since he did not get the chance tonight. But Marcus does not want to swim alone, so the officials are allowing the whole A heat to swim the heat again tomorrow night.

This is why the result page did not show any times for the 100 breast finals tonight. However, tomorrow I will be swimming the 200 breaststroke prelims and finals and the 100 breast at the start of finals Saturday night. I will have lots of time between the two races since the 100 breast will be the first event and the 200 breast one of the last events of the night. Placements will be official after the 100 breast time trial tomorrow night, so tomorrow is a busy day and I’m off to bed to prepare….

Here are some pictures from the end of my Hawaii trip from our training and on our one off-day where I got to go to the North Shore for some relaxation. All trip, we had been talking about doing a 100 meter dash just to see how fast we could go, and finally at the end of the trip we raced from a three-point stance where I went a 12.20. After two months of training though, it is finally time to race again

I will be competing again this coming weekend at the 2011 Missouri Long Course Grand Prix. The meet will be held at the University of Missouri from February 18-20 in Columbia, MO.

Training has been going pretty well as I have been focusing more on long course training. I did 10 practices last week totaling around 60,000 meters for the week. On Thursday, I participated in an interesting study with the Canadian Sports Performance Centre that was measuring our force created on our starts. There were four measurement pads on top of the blocks where each pad would measure force created by a foot on the block in the vertical and horizontal direction. I haven’t seen the full results yet, but it was a great tool to help optimize the most horizontal force as possible.

I will be swimming the 100 breast on Friday, 200 breast on Saturday, and 200 IM on Sunday. I will racing against America’s top breaststrokers in Gangloff, Alexandrov, Titus, Burckle, Japan’s Ryo Tateishi, & Brazil’s Felipe Lima. I am looking forward to seeing some friends and old teammates at the meet as well. It will be my first meet since the SC World Championships, so I am really excited to race again in preparation for Canadian Spring Nationals at the end of March. Results can be found by clicking this link during the meet.