Breaking a US Masters Swimming National RecordWhile folklore claims that the Fountain of Youth was discovered by Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León in present-day Florida, I beg to differ. Firstly, Florida is the retirement capital of the US, and secondly, the true Fountain of Youth can be found at any swimming pool hosting a US Masters swim meet, where 90-year-old athletes race with the vigor of their 20s. US Master Swimming is the adult swimming league in America. Competitors range from 22 to 100 years old!!! and possess a wide spectrum of swimming abilities, from newcomers to the sport to world record holders (such as Ryan Lochte). Masters swimming hosts competitions in three types of pools (this will be important later):
For each type of pool, there are national records and relay records for each event. The record we broke was the SCM 200 meter medley relay (with aggregate age between 72-99). The 200 meter medley relay consists of four swimmers, each swimming a 50-meter leg (back and forth in a 25-meter pool) in the following order: backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly, and finally freestyle. The Masters records are FAST. The 200 yard medley relay record is 1:26.71 set by Andrew Saeta (Stanford), Nolan Koon (Cal), Nathan Adrian (Olympic gold medalist), Anthony Ervin (Olympic gold medalist). Yes, you read that correctly (your eyes do work!), that relay has two division one swimmers and two Olympians. Their 50 freestyle leg was swum by Anthony Ervin who won the 50m freestyle at the 2000 olympics… Insane For comparison our relay:
Not quite the same… But lucky for us, barely any Masters meets are SCM. So the records are more manageable. One of these rare meets is the Annual Solstice meet were we went for two records, the 200 freestyle relay (every leg is freestyle) and the medley. Hyped up on more caffeine then is probably safe, I swam the first leg of the 200 freestyle relay. And… it was a mess. I didn't hear the starter say “take your marks” and so dove in awkwardly. We missed the record by 0.3 seconds. I didn't warm down afterwards so loaded with lactate acid, we lined up again just 15 minutes after the freestyle relay for the medley. And it went much better. We SMASHED the record, clocking a 1:45.90.
* The touchpad glitched, so Peter's and my splits are not super accurate. Special shoutout to Peter's family for letting us stay at their place and for feeding us endless Neapolitan pizzas! Clip of the last 25 meters (I'm the freestyler in the center lane): |