King of the kickboard for a day

Being on a team with so much raw talent combined with hard working swimmers, there aren't many days I can say that I excelled in the group.  Many days, especially when I'm swimming Middle Distance, I get beat by bodylengths, it's unreal.  Today was a green swim set with a focus on kicking:

MAIN SET

3 x

15m UW from a dive blast + 35m dolphin kick on back moderate
50m Kick Blast for time
25m easy - stop - 25m Blast to a great finish
50m swim from a dive for time, keep rates up with small moderate kick

 TWEEN

6 x 100m pull @ 1:30

I held with the best of the group during the 15 underwater from a dive but when we got to the 50m kick for time, it was MY set.  I still think I can do much better at these kick sets but today was certainly respectable.  Each of the 3 rounds I was either tied with the fastest, or I was the fastest.  The top time of the day being my 32.3.  I've kicked faster but that was probably the fastest without rest in the middle of a set.  I still refuse to do armstrokes during kick sets, a habit everybody else in the group chooses to embrace.  An unwritten rule on CW/UofM is that "anything goes inside the flags" which translates to the fact that you can do entire armstrokes during a dedicated kick set.  It's something I've chosen not to embrace.  I feel that a kick set should be just that, kicking.  It should be known that I indeed always take one arm pull into the wall.  I've always done this along with every other swimmer I know.  I like limiting it to a single stroke though especially from what I've seen on this team.  A mostly innocent rule of "inside the flags" seems to creep into "right at the flags" and then to, "one pull before the flags along with within the flags".  This seems to have grown into people downright swimming for 8-9 meters in and out of the wall.  To me, that's crazy.  That's not a kick set.  For this reason, when we do short course swimming, I just get trampled by everybody since they are kicking for 40% the pool length and I'm kicking for 98% of the pool length.  When the pool is long course, it's a different story and I love every second of it.  With so many fewer "inside the flags" portions of the pool, it turns into a real kick set.  Suddenly my stubborn attitude toward the unwritten rule starts paying off.  There are moments of these kick sets where it's just weird how fast I'm pulling away from other swimmers, by the 25m mark, I'm a body length ahead of somebody who started a split second ahead of me and I maintain or gain on that lead in the last 25 meters.  Kick sets like these just put a big smile on my face.  I love swimming with talented swimmers, and although I typically get beat, there are days when I don't.  This was one of those days.

I'm a good kicker and I'm on my way to being a great kicker.