"Short Course Yards" has been given a new meaning

Sep
24

"Short Course Yards" has been given a new meaning

Posted by Kevin Doak on Saturday at: 7:26am (September 24th, 2011)
"Short Course Yards" has been given a new meaning

On Friday we finished the workout up by moving the bulkhead and turning the lanelines to create a 12.5 yard competition pool.  This setup was complete with racing blocks at both sides, a starter and touchpads connected to the scoreboard.  I've never seen, nor raced in such a short pool.  The whole set was a blast.  We started out doing 4 lengths which totaled 50 yards.  The best time I saw was a 18.95 freestyle, 21.2 butterfly and 22.2 breast.  I was a 22.0 butterfly.  Nobody even tried backstroke due to the lack of flags.  Next we moved onto 2 lengths, a total of 25 yards with one turn.  The times started to get ridiculous with swimmers touching in 8-10 seconds.  My best butterfly was a 10.05, others were faster.  Finally we did one lap, starting from the far end of the mini-pool.  I swam a 4.36 in my 12.5 yard butterfly, a respectable time among the others.  The race at this point really amounted to just diving in and doing butterfly kicks to the other end.  I watched one swimmer do it in 3.92 seconds... very impressive.

At first I thought it was a pretty stupid set since at no point will we ever RACE a 12.5 yard race.  Yet, the coaches explained that it was all about making adjustments.  Since the races were so short, we weren't getting tired from doing plenty of them.  We were told to focus on the small things and perfect our short race.  It started to make sense.  A slight adjustment to my breakout yielded a 0.3 second drop in one of my times.  A better start on the next swim yielded another time drop.  In the end I saw a lot of value in the fun set.  People were having fun and becoming very competitive at the same time.  It was a good set.  Lots of cheering and support from everybody!

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