Danny is my baby brother, and also my muse. He is a real writer, as in he has degrees to show for it and pays the rent by writing. So I hesitated to put this in as it's a little much, but I don't want to offend him as at least he submitted an entry (Bobby, Carrie, hello?) What I really want to read about is Danny's swimming experience as a kid. He still refuses to race me in the 50 yard crawl, btw. Love you, Dan!
As most of you know, my sister Katie is a strong swimmer. That wasn’t always the case, though. As a child she was a so-so aquatician, content merely to achieve her “A” times in AAU, never really taking to heart Coach Skip Runkle’s motto that “Practice Makes Perfect, But Perfect Practice Makes Even More Perfect.” Ultimately Katie abandoned competitive swimming prior to the high school level to pursue driving around in our dad’s 1976 Jaguar while to listening to Styx and Billy Squier on the 8-track and looking for a carryout to sell her and her friends a six-pack of Michelob Light. And they were usually successful. Anyway, it wasn’t until she started Masters Swimming as an adult that she rose from the so-so to the bad-ass level, from the merely content to the merely going to kick some ass. What proof do you have, you may ask, that your sister Katie is a bad-ass swimmer? Allow me to present an anecdote to illustrate my point.
Katie was visiting dad and mom during our dad's last year of life - March 1999. She went to the beach with dad and decided to take a walk to the end of the beach where there was an inlet between two sections of land, and the water flowed into a place under a bridge where boats came in and out. The current was strong. She was walking along the beach when she heard a man start yelling "help!" and then a whole bunch of people start gathering to watch this man who was being swept into the inlet stream. He had waded into the water on the other side of the inlet and got swept into the stream. A boat was coming and threw a life preserver but missed horribly and its momentum kept going. She looked around, everyone is screaming, so she threw off her glasses and hat and ran (ala Baywatch!) into the rushing stream to save this guy. She brought him to shore, he was exhausted and all these old ladies were surrounding Katie saying "oh honey, you are a hero!" and wanting her name, etc. Unfortunately, all the guy's family was on the other side of the inlet so we have no idea how he got back because it started to become a scene. It was a little embarrassing for Katie so she took off. She went back to dad and told him the story and we remember him saying how proud he was of her. I’m proud of her too, not just for swimming, but for many other things.
Today's workout:
300 WU on own
3 x (4x50) going build up, build down, easy, fast (middle four stroke)
3 x 200 hypoxic going 5, 3, 7, 11
500 on 7:30 going 200 hard, 100 easy, 100 build, 100 fast
400 on 6:00 negative split
300 FAST
4 x 25 easy
500 on 7:15
400 (we pulled) on 5:45
300 FAST
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