Thursday, March 4,2010
What a day! Waking up after a great nights sleep and enjoying a great cup of coffee (at the hotel mind you) - does it get any better than that? Why yes it does.
Day one of Prelims.. Drop boys off in middle of the street with Mark Nelson, who is officiating and also working into the wee hours of the night for his part-time job that pays the bills, so they can make the 7:30AM officials meeting and get a warm up before the 200 Free Relay. The girls and I park the van a couple of blocks away in yet another 7' clearance garage. Note to Univ. of Texas - come on, really? I only brave a couple of levels before I park at an ever so slight angle and make everyone who parked after me so angry that I could not enter the van on either side and had to crawl in through the back. Live and learn I guess.
Back to the pool.. Boy's relay dropped even with the nerves of being first heat and first male event! Great swims with Matt Beatty leading, followed by Adam Long, Austin Adams and anchored by Barks. Kelsey Nelson was next to hit the water with a great swim in the 100 Fly followed by Big Mac (Hannah) with drops in both her events of the day. Barkley also had a strong swim in the 100 fly with a time of 51.76 moving him from a ranking of 84th to 53rd but the biggest move in rank was Hannah Mac's 50 free - from 320th to 243rd and this was her bonus event!
And then on to the fun - TIME TRIALS! Who would have thought the excitement would have been so..... funny! All four athletes swam great dropping from 1 to 7 seconds in their events but that wasn't the funny part. We are hanging out on the 4th level in the spectator area while the time trials are starting up. Athletes are warmed up, in their performance suits and hanging out up top with Kelsey and I. Hanging out up top????? Austin lets Allison know how cool her name looks on the scoreboard before 9 kinds of panic sink in as we realize this is HER HEAT! Like the wind she is off running down four or five flights of stairs while our hero, Mark Nelson, stalls for us. After sliding into place behind lane 5, huffing and puffing, weezing and whining, she drops 3 full seconds in her 100 Fly - go figure - if we can get the "bike leg" down, we have a Triathlete! Sorry this blog was so long but I am very proud of each and everyone of our swimmers, I hope we have more qualified next year! GO TAC!!