First one in the water

This afternoon I showed up at the pool at 12:45pm local time to swim.  I stretched for a few minutes and as I was walking to the side of the pool, a lifeguard reminded me that the pool was closing at 1:00pm.  Disapointed, I squeezed in 10 minutes of swimming followed by two great starts.  I got dressed and left the pool to kill some time at the Westfield Mall, just steps outside the London Aquatic Centre. There I got some good Thai food from my buddy at the restaurant.  I've seen this guy almost every day since I've arrived, he seems to be making friends with all the swimmers.  I relaxed for an hour and headed back to the Natatorium around 3:30pm.  I stopped off at the Speedo building to check out the new Fastskin3 Super Elite suits.  I've heard both good and bad things about them.  Prior to my backstroke, I had every intention of buying a new LZR Elite suit like the one I had.  Mine is worn out a bit so a new one was a good idea.  Speedo naturally was only selling their new expensive suit, not last year's suit which I had.  I chose not to buy one then and raced my 100 Backstroke in an old jammer.

I chose to get body scanned by speedo today.  It was an interesting experience.  Overall it was a bit unsettling.  First off, you're basically in a store with people shopping around for goggles, everybody is fully clothed.  You are asked to remove your clothes behind a curtain, put on a speedo brief suit and step into what looks like a large photo booth.  You stand on two feet marks on the floor and hold onto handles on each side.  Music plays and a voice tells you what's going on, step by step.  9 lights on both the front and back flash as 36 cameras photograph your body.  A program takes measurements after a 3D scan of your body is complete.  Afterward, they can recommend which suit you need.  In my case, the machine was broken.  They scanned my body 4 times while I heard the error message "ding" come across the speakers each time.  The speedo staff finally gave up and just measured my body.  The whole process sort of seemed like a gimmick when they could have easily measured my body by hand.  After the measuring, they recommended I try on a SR10 size suit.  For some crazy reason they decided to change all the sizes from normal waist sizes to some arbitrary numbering system, I've yet to make sense of it.  After talking to a teammate with an SR6 suit (smaller), it seems as though mine might be too large.  I feel like it's pretty darn tight as it is though.  The suit itself doesn't feel slick, it's actually very heavy fabric.  Downright thick.  It also doesn't have any drawstring at all.  Since it extends above your hips, you just have to hope the speedo engineers got all the math right to keep that thing on!

I decided to try it out in the competition pool as soon as it opened at 4:30pm.  I was the first one in the water.  It was neat to dive into the calm water of the newest, fastest pool on the planet.  I warmed up for 15 mins and got out.  I'm relaxing for the night before my two big races tomorrow.  I'm a little concerned with the time between events.  The only race between the 50 Free and 100 Fly is the Womens 800 Free.  There will probably be 4 heats at 9 minutes per heat.  I SHOULD have about 40 minutes to cool down from my 50 free to prepare for my 100 Fly. Historically I don't do well with short rest between events but 40 minutes should be enough, even for me.

Looking forward to racing again!