nationals 2009

Well, nationals is over; it's finally time to relax, and blog about it. I'm spending the day sitting on the couch watching the basketball tournament, but I'll take some time to give an update on the last few days.

The swimming was incredibly fast, see the 18 out of 36 national records that were set at the meet. The tech suits definitely made a difference, if you need more proof see the Santa Cruz 400 freestyle relay, where they decided to wear speedos instead of their tech suits and added 6 seconds from prelims. However, everyone seemed to fare differently using the new suits. I swam my first three races with a Blueseventy, but decided that I wasn't comfortable in it and swam better in the Lzr legsuit, so I switched to that for the last three races. Westby also felt that the blueseventy wasn't working for him and wore a Lzr jammer for his breaststrokes. Some people certainly swam well and even set records in both blueseventies and lzrs, but it seemed like they worked differently for everyone. The whole suit aspect of swimming is getting pretty complicated and ridiculous if you ask me.

Anyway, on to the actual swimming. I was pretty happy with the way it turned out for me. I dropped a little off my 200 IM and 200 breast times from conference. I missed the top 8 in my 400 IM but was happy to come back and take ninth with a better swim at night. I ended up in 25th with 34 points.

The women had a very successful meet, finishing in 17th with 49 points, their strongest finish since the Marsman era ended in 2005. The highlight from the first day was the 200 medley relay which finished 13th. The time was second in Carleton history only to their conference time. The highlight on the second day was Maggie's 200 freestyle. After a great swim in the morning she dropped another eight tenths at night to win the consolation final out of lane one in maybe the most exciting race for Carleton of the weekend. On the third day Kate just missed the top sixteen in her hundred breast but posted her best time ever which was just 0.45 seconds off the school record. On the final day, Kale took the school record in the 200 backstroke back away from Maggie finishing seventh for her first All-American citation, her final swim was the 4th time that record has been set this year.

The other non-swimming highlights included the CBS man stalking the Alexander's all weekend, the senior gifts of ten dollar chocolate bunnies (way better than flowers), the Haucks getting coaches of the meet and the Oles getting what appeared to be a mini-fridge for taking fourth, and dinner at the Loring Pasta Bar, which apparently turns into a salsa dancing club after 11 on Saturdays.

Thank you to everyone who was there cheering and timing and to everyone who wasn't there but was cheering anyway. It was a great meet.