New season starting

In a few minutes, my wife is going to pick CK up from school, give her a snack and take her to swim practice. It's starting again. This is CK's third season and I'm amazed by how much more I know about swimming now and by how much better CK is.

On Sunday, she gave me a short lesson that really really helped. Then on Monday (Labor Day) we raced again. This time, she knew to count the seconds until I came in so that we'd see how I'm doing.

• First race, 25 yards freestyle. She beat me by 4 seconds.
• Second race, 25 yards freestyle (me) v. backstroke (her). She beat me by about 2.5 seconds.
• Third race, 25 yards free v. butterfly. She beat me by about 3.5 seconds.
• Fourth race, 25 yards free v. breaststroke. I won! I was too excited to count by how much since it just didn't matter. And I don't think I can count in tenths of seconds anyway.
• Fifth race, 50 yards free v. free. She was up about half a second into the wall, got about another 2 seconds on me during the turn (I can't flipturn) and I held on to only lose by about 2-3 seconds. I think she was pacing herself too much on the beginning and just didn't have any urgency on the second 25. So, two things happened, I can maintain a pace better than I used to for 50 yards and she really didn't put much effort into this race. But still, I felt good.

I did take that moment to step out of my selfishness and talk to her about her pacing. On a 50 long course, she does it as a sprint so why does she pace herself on the first half of a 50 short course. Shouldn't that be a sprint too? We'll see if that helps, she has that race at the end of September.

I am so psyched about the upcoming season for CK; her improvement in the last six months has been so remarkable that there is no way she can keep up the pace but it sure will be fun watching it. We're trying not to talk about PRTs too much (we refer to them as Potato Radish Turnips) so that we don't jinx it but (knock on wood) she has a heck of a chance of getting a few more in the next two months.

Of course, helping her is self-defeating for my own goals but I think I can live with that. If we can have Potato Radish Turnip casserole a few more times.