Suerte que en el sur hayas nacido

A little Shakira, today, in honor of Cinco de Mayo; and Suerte seems appropriate given that my flight back from Masters Nationals last night got in a half hour early (got to love tailwinds: flight over took 3 hours, flight back took 2). The fact that all 3 flight attendants were middle-aged men, and that I had a little, old lady in the row behind me who I swear swiped one of Dolly Parton's big hair wigs (which looked too big for her wee frame), and had a propensity to skirt rules... well, that was just icing.

Anyways, so I flew back from San Antonio last night, coming back from Masters Nationals in Austin. The meet, itself, went ok for me. Of my six individual races, I'm calling 2 of them good, and the other 4 "not good" (baddisastrous) just seems too strong, at the moment; likewise . Event-by-event wrap up:

Thursday

• 1650 free--17:07.47
  (While, I did win my age group, I also went slower than what I went in February; a not good way to get the meet started off. Oh, and you can watch the race here--I'm the one in lane 4 who waits to get up on the starting block until we were supposed to be up there ;-) Look for me hanging around peskily as lane 3 tries to pass me in the back half of the race, as well as a nice last 25...)

Friday

• 400 IM--4:26.94
  (Just a wee smidgen faster than the 2 4:27 swum earlier this year, and a not good feeling back leg, boding poorly for my next event.)
  
• 200 back--2:06.44
  (Third time's the charm? Not really... on the plus side, it didn't hurt a whole lot... although when your strategy is to try to hang with the sprinters the first 100 and come back on them during the second 100, and you don't... well, it doesn't looks so good to be in lane 6 and finishing noticeably back from the field. But someone has to be last, I guess? The 3 hours break after it and before the relay did allow for some helpful brooding, as well as some lunch, though.)
  
• 50 free (mixed free relay)--23.03
  (My ability to fake-a-50 seems to be returning somewhat--so this is a neutral. I say "fake", as I long ago accepted that I don't really know how to swim this race. My indication being that I'm not tired when it's done--unless your really not supposed to do any work in it?)
  

Saturday

• 200 fly--1:56.60
  (Is good, but, wow, did this hurt; and some friends of mine took some rather interesting pictures of me panting heavily just afterwards. The scary part is that of late, my 2 back and 2 fly have been right around the same time... like withing tenths-of-a-second; not 10 seconds apart--that's for spacing between swimmers on sets, right Heidi ;)
  
• 200 free--1:51.28
  (As the Friends theme goes... "It's like you're always stuck in 2nd gear..."; not a good song to have stuck in ones head, but an apt description of what the race felt like. Oh, and I was in heat 48--forty-eight--of 53! So the event took a little time to get through, even with odd and even heats at different ends of the pool.)
  
• 50 back (mixed medley relay)--25.06
  (Man, did I have a lead... it was nice.)
  
• 50 free (mixed free relay)--22.46
  (Noticeable for 3 factors: 1) It was .6 faster than the day before--which is a lot; 2) the relay that finished just ahead of us in the final standings, but wasn't in our heat, had their anchor go 20.1... and 3) the race was at 7:15 at night. The meet on Saturday went from 8:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.--the longest day.)
  

Sunday

• 500 free--4:50.95
  (Good in that it bucked the bad free trend established in my previous 2 races--3 time was the charm. I held a pace, despite the fact that my legs started hurting at the 100... but it was the last event I did, and then I headed out to catch my flight.)
  

As we were leaving Austin, I grabbed some lunch at Chuy's (one last TexMex meal before departing) and picked up a new cell phone (a Sony Ericsson, which is a different brand of phone, so I'm going through learning a bunch of new quirks to its programming). But before I shove off, a big thank you to my teammate Linda for all her great support, and super counting during the event (I think she counted like 90% of our team's distance races....)--it was much appreciated.

And that's is all for now... (though I now feel a wee bit better about the meet overall). Hasta.


Contigo, mi vida
quiero vivir la vida
y lo que me queda de vida
quiero vivir contigo