St. Johns and U of Mich

It's been a pretty busy fall, with a swim meet nearly every weekend except for Thanksgiving. I guess I've fallen behind on my blogging! I'll try to catch up here with two new blogs.

Before Thanksgiving Lexy had a meet in St. Johns, Michigan. This was the same meet she swam last year where she swam her first 100 IM and won it handily. We knew that aging up into to 9-10 age group would be tough, and this meet really made it obvious. She had some really slow times and we left a little disappointed.

After Thanksgiving we packed up the car and headed to Ann Arbor for a two-day meet at the University of Michigan. We had never been to this meet and were kind of excited about it. This is where Michael Phelps trained for the Olympics.

About 15 minutes into the drive south, Lexy announced she wasn't feeling well; and about two minutes later she started throwing up in the back seat. Poor kid! We made it to an exit to get her cleaned up and into clean clothes. Unfortunately, due to the winter weather, turning around and going home wasn't really an option. Going north we had noticed multiple spin-outs and cars in the ditch -- enough to stop traffic for miles. Going south, the traffic was still moving fine though we did pass a skid or two.

As we ventured farther south, parts of the freeway were closed because of multiple car pile-ups. At one point the state police detoured us off the freeway for a few miles to clean up an accident. Now we were starting to get nervous that we would miss check-in. If you miss check-in, the meet officials assume you have scratched for the day and you can't swim. We made a call and got one of our team's parents to check us in. We arrived after a three hour trip -- one that normally takes two.

Lexy swam her first two events with no success. With one event to go she asked if she could scratch because she felt like she would vomit again. The coach agreed and we went to our hotel for the rest of the afternoon. Lexy promptly threw up again. We wondered if she would swim on Sunday!

Sunday morning, after a good night sleep and a good breakfast, Lexy felt ready to tackle the four events in front of her, and she had a great day. This included swimming the 100 backstroke for the first time and dropping 22 seconds. She dropped a second in her 50 freestyle and another second in her 50 breaststroke. She had a successful day among the thousand or so other swimmers who had showed up for this annual event.