I’m writing this right now in the dark, hoping that I’m not waking up Rachel. But I can’t sleep because I am still so excited about my race. So I thought that I would write to you guys and tell you how it went.

In prelims, I was originally seeded third, so I had to go in the first circle-seeded heat before Jess and Leisel. It’s a position that requires you to go fairly hard, because you really have no idea what will make it back.

I pushed it a bit, letting my legs work a little in the last part of the race just to see what I could do and went 1:07.23, which is pretty good for the AM. I came out of the heats seeded first, but it totally looked as if Leisel had been taking a bath and Jess’ dome cap that she had on over her latex cap fell off in the race, so I wasn’t so sure what would happen at night.

In semis I was in the second heat, so I got to see what the girls did ahead of me did. I went 1:06.72, a best time, or as they say in Australia, a pb. I ended up first again, but I was still pretty sure Leisel was taking it easy. I decided that I would just swim my own race during finals and not worry about what anyone else did.

I wanted to go a best time, and I knew how to set myself up for that. I wasn’t going to require myself to go for a world record or speculate on what it was going to take to win. I decided that I was just going to swim and then if things worked out, I’d let myself race (as long as it was still within my stroke) the last 30 meters or so.

As it turned out, in finals Leisel did go a lot faster — 1:05.72. I raced to a best time at 1:06.34.

I was pretty proud of my time, and even though I don’t like to lose, second to the world record holder isn’t something to be ashamed about. I was glad that I gave her a run for it. About a month ago, my best time was 1:07.05, and I don’t think that I’ve dropped that much time in such a short period since 2004, maybe even 2002. So, yeah — nice!

The only thing I was a little sad about was that I couldn’t keep the streak going. The Americans had an awesome night. We had three world records from Michael, Natalie and Aaron. We won all the events except for breaststroke (the last event). We also had an American record by Katie in the 200 free, and Kate almost beat Janet Evans’ world record in the 1,500 (only nine-tenths away). Pretty awesome.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 27th, 2007 at 3:48 pm and is filed under tarakirk. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.