Report from Long Beach
I’m in Long Beach right now swimming in the Grand Prix. Today, I swam the 200 breaststroke and the 50 free. Things went pretty well. I went 2:12 in the morning in the 200 and 23.9 in the 50. I won the swim off for 8th in the 50 with a 23.5, but then someone from the B flight beat my prelims time and I had to swim in the B final. Boo.
At night, I went 2:07.9 in the 200, which was really good for this time of year, and I beat out a really good field of breaststrokers. Amanda Beard was here and so was Caitlin Leverenz. There were also a bunch of good swimmers from Trojan Swimming.
I swam the 50 right after the 200 and did OK. 23.7. It wasn’t as good as the swim off but decent for me at least. Dana was in the same heat, and she won, so that was good. I was just happy that I did OK with only a few minutes break between events. My lactate levels have been really low at this meet but after that 50, I had a really high lactate reading. It was probably because of the hard longer swim, the short rest, and then the intense sprint.
In other news, on Thursday I participated in a panel about doping in sports. It was very interesting. It was officially called “Doping in Sports: The State of Play” and was presented by the Stanford Center on Ethics. The other panelists were all pretty cool. They were track and field coach Dan Pfaff, Stanford football offensive coordinator David Shaw, “Game of Shadows” co-author Lance Williams, and Stanford professor emeritus Carl Djerassi.
I got to sit right next to Carl Djerassi, who is this amazing thinker and was really interesting. I felt a little thrill because he is very famous in the Human Biology department at Stanford (that was my undergrad degree) and at some points, it was almost like he and I were having a discussion.
The whole thing was really fun and really made me think about some very deep ethical issues (like if something like gene doping comes along and is undetectable — is that the end of sport as we know it?). But I also learned that a lot of people think that doping in sports is a lot more common than I think. I don’t know if I am just naive or if swimming has somehow stayed cleaner than other sports, but it was depressing hearing other people say how common they thought doping in sports was.