Snow. . .Slow

A big part of the fun (for me) of going to away meets is visiting new communities in Michigan. This was our first trip to the EGRA meet, which is located in East Grand Rapids, Michigan. We don't normally swim on the western side of the state, so I was really looking forward to it. Lexy was looking forward to seeing snow! It's been such a warm autumn, that we haven't had any significant snowfall yet. We had heard that the west side of the state was getting lake effect snow off of Lake Michigan, but they only had three or four inches -- definitely not significant by a Michiganders standards.

East Grand Rapids is a suburb of Grand Rapids, one of Michigan's largest cities. Even in the pre-dawn early morning, we could see the beautiful homes and the delightful shopping area known as Gaslight Village. They had real, working gaslights, heated, ice-free sidewalks, and Christmas carols playing on outdoor speakers to add to the holiday ambiance. I want to go back when I can enjoy the little village.

If it feels like I'm taking a long time getting to a summary of the meet, there's a good reason for that -- which I tried to hint at in the title of this post. We expect a rough meet every once in a while, and boy, was this one rough! There were no best times this weekend. In fact, Lexy was a good measure slower than she has been. We're not sure what to attribute this to, but we're just going to chalk it up to being tired.

Instead of talking about her best events, this time I'm going to focus on her worst. Lexy's not a big fan of the 100 Fly, but she swims it without complaining. There are not too many kids who want to put themselves through the rigor of this event. Consider the following evidence. On Saturday morning, the first event was the 100 Freestyle. This is a very popular event, so popular in fact there were 119 girls age 10 & under who entered to swim it. In addition to that, there were 45 entries from 10 & under boys. Factoring in swimmers who didn't show up, and the fact that the pool was configured for 8 lanes, there were 21 heats of this event.

Compare this to the entries for the 100 Fly: 14 girls and 5 boys. There were three heats. Of these 19 kids, five have Q1 (state qualifying times) and Lexy is one of them.

The event, consisting of four lengths of butterfly, started well, but at the end of the first length, the fire alarms went off. I found out later that the T-shirt purveyor in the lobby was using a silk screen machine that was so hot it was giving off smoke, which set off the alarms. Imagine the concern of the parents of several hundred kids who wondered, for about a minute, how we were going to evacuate all those wet kids who didn't have ready access to shoes in freezing temps! The meet hosts confirmed quickly that it was a false alarm and the kids in the pool (Lexy included) just kept on swimming.

The results showed that Lexy finished her 100 Fly 15 seconds slower than her best time. I immediately attributed this to the fire alarm distraction, but Lexy later confirmed that she never heard the fire alarm -- she was just tired! So much for the distraction theory.

In the end, Lexy had a couple of decent events, but as I said, no best times. The camera angles at this meet were such that I didn't bother taking video -- it was always hard to tell where she was.

What I did learn is that Lexy has two Q1 times and four Q2's. The Q2s mean that she can swim those events at the Junior Olympics in March. This is really great, and it will be the first time that Lexy can participate in that meet.

We've got one more meet before the holidays, the Dolphin Invitational right here in Midland. Then we don't swim again until after the first of the year. Overall, Lex is having a great year and this one anomaly can be forgotten.