Swim stars, LZR, food and Qwest Center alternative

Jun
28

Swim stars, LZR, food and Qwest Center alternative

Posted by Kevin Doak on Saturday at: 4:06am (June 28th, 2008)
While I was waiting around for the administration to open the pool back up, I got to walk around and people watch. As expected there are plenty of big name swimmers present. I saw Aaron Peirsol (WR 100 Back), Benden Hansen (WR 100 Breast, WR 200 Breast), Amanda Beard
(Olympian), Michael Phelps (wait, who?), David Cromwell (good 100 back), Eric Shanteau (good 200 Breast), Mary Descenza (good 200 fly), David Plummer (good 100 and 200 back)... Sure there were more but I'm forgetting now. The point being, it turns out that this meet has
attracted some talent, who would have guessed.


While we were stuck in the Qwest, I headed over to the Speedo booth to investigate the LZR suit situation. They didn't have my size, but said they would have it tomorrow morning. They seem pretty disorganized about the whole thing.


I took a picture of everybody waiting around for the pool to reopen. Once the Qwest Center was evacuated we got to see the damage outside. Large pieces of the building were ripped off and the inside of the Arena was exposed.


I saw some of the Minnesota swimmers leaving the Qwest Center and they mentioned they were headed to a high school pool to swim. I asked if I could tag along. I'm really glad I did, it was one of the only local pools available. I swam about 800 short course meters.


I ended up giving a ride to a friend Christine Jennings, whom I met while I was down spectating Open Water Nationals last year. Afterwards we all went to Godfathers Pizza for some dinner. It's been nice to catch up with a few friends I had on the Minnesota team. My good friend Zach Wood, and his teammates Dan and David, both backstrokers. It was a fun day overall, I'm tired now so I'm sure I'll sleep well tonight. I will get up around 9am, get breakfast and be at the pool by 10am to swim. This puts me on a good schedule to be ready to swim at 11am on Monday morning.

A bunch of local elementry school students drew pictures for the Olympic Trials... how cute