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Crazy weekend, had to work quite a bit this weekend which meant the only time I got in the water was this morning. I needed a little break anyway. I'll make tomorrow the start of my taper. I felt great in the water today. I headed over to Fuller pool to swim with the masters group over there and did about 4,000 meters. I really enjoy swimming with them, it's a great group. It's hard to believe trials are two weeks away, it's been a long time counting down the days.

A natural result of swimming so much is that my hair gets lighter. In years past I thought it was kind of cool that I could change my hair color for free. The comments started a few weeks ago when my hair color, which is naturally dark brown, crossed the threshold into "blonde highlight" territory. This invokes comments relating to "boy bands", "who's your stylist?" and "oh... wow... your umm... blonde"

I really can't wait to get a haircut... one more week of ridicule, then I can break away from the boy band.

I had a great practice yesterday. I did a great sprint kick set and decided to do some all out 50's for time with a minute rest. The results were great, I was going 28.xx from a push which represents the fastest I've ever gone in practice for a long course 50 meters. I think I needed to prove this to myself after my backstroke event this past weekend. This simple set proved to me that I have the speed, I'm faster now than I ever have been. The only challenge is converting that speed and harnessing in a race.

My next meet is the Olympic Trials. Less than 3 weeks away. It feels both exciting and scary at the same time. I know I've already accomplished what I wanted to, which was to make it to the Olympic Trials, but I can't help but want to do really well there. This weekend was a good meet overall, a lifetime best 50 free but a disappointing 100 back. It's tough not to focus on the fact that my best event was weak this past weekend. I'm going to do my very best to train these next few weeks in hopes I'm more prepared to swim well in Omaha.

Well back in Michigan finally, today I'm catching up on work and swimming whenever I can. Interestingly enough I've gotten a few inquiries about my tinted goggle modification, I figured I would put together a quick tutorial for those who stumble on this site. I'll post it later.

Wow, Lenny Krazelburg, one of the best backstrokers in the world, 4 time Olympic Gold medalist announced his retirement. This is one of the swimmers I followed through the last few Olympics. He was passionate about promoting the sport and founded a few of his own camps and training programs for swimming. Here is an excerpt from the USA swimming article:

What a great weekend. I would have liked to do better in my 100 back, but I had a great 50 Free. I dropped almost a half a second to a lifetime best time of 23.76. It was a blast to be part of a meet so deep with talent. Here is an article written on USA swimming regarding this weekend:

http://usaswimming.org/USASWeb/ViewNewsArticle.aspx?TabId=0&Alias=Rainbow&Lang=en&ItemId=2048&mid=3774

I'm watching the 1500 free right now. It was a great final session with some very fast swims.

Some things I noticed about the meet:

I was just looking over the results from the 50 free and it struck me that I'm listed on the same page as Gary Hall Jr. and Neil Walker. These are two Olympians and pro swimmers I grew up reading about and watching on TV. This is exactly why I'm still training. I want to swim among the best of the best, these are two examples of what the BEST really is.

Well the time trial 100 back went better than yesterday but still not as well as I had hoped. I went a 59.02. It would have been nice to at least see a 58 up there, but I'll take it. I'm not sure of my splits but from timing the video it looks like it was a 27.62. If that's around what it was that's not a horrible place to be, lately I've been a 27.2 - 27.4 on a good swim. I'll be interested to see the real splits when I return for the final session to watch.

A few things I noticed about this race: