Chopstick's first meet of the season

Holy Freakin' Frijoles, it was hot this weekend. The kids got to jump in the pool every once in a while, the parents just had to stand there creating sweat puddles as they pretended to cheer on their kids. People in the desert should get this heat, not those lucky enough to live in the Bay Area.

But Chopstick did swim and she swam her little heart out. I am convinced she's faster when she sees splashing near her, she's just not a good front-runner, and luckily there were some fast kids at this meet. I'll just give her rundown: 2 firsts, 2 seconds, 1 third, 1 fourth, and 1 fifth. Included in those were 6 personal bests in 7 events (just missed on 25 free). And, here's the kicker, 3 PRTs. In two of those PRT swims, she came in second, meaning there was another kid even faster.

I'll brag first about the 50 fly. Wow. She hadn't swam this event since last May so we were pretty sure she'd drop some time but neither of us saw this coming. She chopped 7 seconds off the time and beat the PRT time by over 2 seconds. She was seeded second in lane 5; the girl in lane 4 (possibly a robot or alien, I'm looking into this) couldn't possibly have expected any competition since she had a seed time 6 seconds faster than Chopstick. But from the start it was a Race with a capital R. Chopstick was just behind her the entire way, probably about a headlength tops. She knew this girl was winning the whole way and I'm convinced that accounted for at least a second or two off of her time. It was a thing of beauty. Her coach started his critique with the greatest sentence: "not many 8 and unders can swim a 50 fly that fast"; then he talked about how to make it faster.

The 50 back was similar, she touched .02 seconds behind the winner. Oddly enough I saw her peek over at one point so she knew where she was in the race. Like any odd head movement, it veered her left for a few feet, possibly accounting for the .02, but I sure as heck don't care, she PRT'd the heck out of that swim. I think I expected a drop, just not that much of one.

I don't remember a thing about her 25 back. I know she won, I know she got a PRT but I couldn't tell you anything about that race. That's not like me, I think I can blame heatstroke. Yep, it was that hot.

Chopstick and I had really tried to dampen expectations for this meet since she'd dropped so much time in the last couple of meets so we were pleasantly surprised by her times at this one. She has one more meet left as an 8 & under and she's at the point where she just wants to get it over with to move on to the 9-10 age group. The only thing really left hanging right now is her 50 breast time; she hasn't swam it since May and a big drop is pretty expected. She'll leave a pretty nice set of times behind her as she moves on to the next challenge. And when she's 9, there will be a lot of feet kicking in front of her to motivate her swims even more.