24.10 in 100 LCM Free Finals

My morning swim of 24.18 was a bit of a disappointment.  I had really hoped to be a 23-anything.  I prepared for my evening finals race exactly as planned.  I slept, ate and arrived at the pool in time to do a full warmup and relaxed until my race.  I was ready to swim.  10 minutes prior to my race I decided to try my Fastskin3 suit again.  The $361.00 investment I made while in London.  As I was putting it on, it ripped.  This was the 2nd of this type of suit I ripped.  I'm very disappointed in the Fastskin3 suits.  During the meet I made it a point to ask swimmers and coaches about their experiences with the suit.  I haven't heard a single positive story.  At this point I'm really wishing I had my $361.00 back.  Comparatively, my $180.00 (or less) LZR Elite Jammer suit is still going strong after 10 meets.  It's certainly lost a bit of it's compression but it hasn't ripped or failed me once.  Speedo certainly took a step backward with this new suit, and I'm not the only person who thinks that.  It will be interesting to see how they handle the public reaction to the suit.

Anyway, back to the race.  I prepared well, ripped a suit, quickly changed into my alternate suit and got ready to swim.  I had committed to change my stroke prior to my race.  After my morning swim I (again) realized how ugly my stroke is.  The buzzer went off and I had a great start.  After a few dolphin kicks I surfaced with a good breakout and immediately started swimming with my improved stroke.  Surprisingly I held it together till the 35 meter mark before I started to revert to my ugly stroke out of sheer exhaustion.  I touched in yet another disappointing 24.10 for a 12th place finish at the meet.  Although I was pleased I swam faster in finals, 0.08 seconds is not exactly a great time drop.  I can be happy that I swam faster with a newly altered stroke.  I have some video of my race I'll watch to study where I can further improve.