I've raced this event at the April meet 5 times, and have a number of ways this was my most solid performance yet
2010: I was still in my first year at Team Z and identified myself as a swimmer. I had no idea how to pace a 1000, and my splits showed it with a 17 second positive split between the 500's.
2012: Nothing special performance 9 seconds slower than 2010.
2013: Aiming for some redemption, I started from the blocks, and then had a person in my heat to chase down for the second half. There was only a 2.5 second positive split between the 500s. I took 2 seconds off my 2010 time, and had a great race.
2014: I started from the blocks, but had a hard time pushing the limits on the pace. When it felt uncomfortable, I backed off, and had my slowest performance yet, almost 20 seconds slower than my PR.
2015: I was late to the event and was placed in the last (slowest) heat. I'm very thankful that they made room for me, and talked with my heat mates in the hour leading up to the event explaining and apologizing -- hopefully I didn't seem like a speedy jerk who didn't understand seed times. After all the traffic anxiety getting there, I made time for a long warmup, including some 100's with and w/o pull buoy to try to hold the memory of what good body position feels like
I had a great dive, and strong first 100. After that, I settled into what felt like steady pacing. My splits agree with that with 1 second between the fastest and slowest 50's for the main part of the race. I was able to kick it up for the last 50 (probably should've tried harder for last 100) and got my fastest non-dive split for the finish.
The end result of this steady, pushing swim was a 15 second PR and a pace of 1:32/100y
In the grand scheme of triathlon-ing, swimming faster won't affect my day much, but it's my favorite part, and seeing improvement at something I've been doing for so many years now is lovely.
Data nerding:
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