Nanaimo Ebbtides Swim Meet

Well, this past weekend I went to the Nanaimo Ebbtides swim meet in Nanaimo, BC on Vancouver Island. At first, I didn't even want to go because I had had such a poor performance at the UBC meet a couple of weeks ago. I felt pretty badly and at the time, I didn't even think I wanted to do much more competing this year. Fortunately, my training partner Joe convinced me to try the Nanaimo meet and swim a couple of off events to just have fun and enjoy myself.

We left on Friday evening after I got home from work to go to the ferry. In the car there was myself, my training partner, his wife and his son. We would be staying at his parents house who live in Nanaimo. The ferry ride over that night was relatively uneventful. I hadn't eaten supper that evening so I decided to grab a bite to eat on the ferry. I ate a vegetarian slice of pizza, a small bowl of clam chowder, a banana, a rice crispies square and I drank a 5 alive. It was pretty expensive at around $12 but I wasn't sure if I would be eating anything later that night so I didn't mind spending the money. As it turns out, when we got to Joe's parents' house, they had some delicious smoked sockeye salmon and some cheese and crackers waiting. That salmon was definitely some of the best that I had ever tasted in a very long time... excellent stuff. We settled into bed that evening and I slept on an air mattress which actually was pretty comfortable. I brought my own pillow and sleeping bag(s) which I needed both of since it was quite cold in the house overnight there.

The next morning quite early in the morning at around 5:30 am, I had a really strange lucid dream about dogs running around and people whispering things around me. I still remember it now. This wasn't any normal lucid dream for sure. I've had lucid dreams before but nothing like this. This was really freaky in that I swear I was hallucinating. I've never had that experience before. I actually believed what I was seeing was real and I didn't realize that I was dreaming and when I finally came to, I felt a bit spooked out actually. In any case, I was able to go back to sleep for a couple of hours before I had to get up for breakast and get ready to go to the pool.
For breakfast that morning, I had a delicious waffle made hot off a waffle iron. It reminded me of something my grandmother used to cook as she used to have an old waffle iron and made us waffles sometimes when I was a kid. After we ate breakfast, we got ready to head to the pool in time for the 11am warmup. When we got to the pool and went to register for the meet, I found out for some bizarre reason that myself and one of my other teammates who was at the meet also (Scott) were not even on the MSABC system and I had no number for the meet. In addition, Joe was registered with the Prince George Masters which obviously is a mistake. We discussed with the MSABC registrar and he decided to have us swim at the meet Unattached for now and hopeully get this fee mixup straightened out. Scott was nice enough to pay the $30 at that time to make sure that I could swim that day. Joe also I think was able to get them to change Prince George on their system so that he was registered with the correct club - Hyack Masters. I know that Joe already sent an e-mail to the registrar, our head coach and our coach about the mixup. Hopefully the problem will be rectified in the next short while as I don't want to have the same problem in a couple of months at the English Bay Meet.

In any case, warmup itself was pretty uneventful and I was able to get in a long warmup and loosen out my muscles after having missed several practices that week due to the snowy weather. The water temperature was not as cold as I remember it 2 years ago when I went to provincials, so that was a positive thing.

Joe brought along his new digital camera which took excellent video and still shots of course as well. We used the camera to record our races which I will have shortly posted up here. I hope to send it to some friends and family who are interested. My first event up was the 200m I.M. I was feeling pretty good before the race.. I had a few jitters before the race but that is totally normal for me. Then the starter blew his whistle and I was up on the blocks. "Take your marks", "Beep!" and then I dove into the water. The first 50m of butterfly felt pretty good. I was actually going a lot faster than I thought afterwards. The backstroke I started to get fatigued a little bit but still managed to hold my own especially on the 2nd 25. The 3rd 50 of breaststroke was somewhat painful and slow and it was at this point, that the guy I was racing caught me. By the time I got to the freestyle, I was really getting tired and was just trying to hang on. When I did the flipturn for the last 25m of the race, I saw the guy who had caught me right beside me. Somehow, I found extra energy and started to sprint to the wall. The other guy saw that and started to sprint too. We were stroke for stroke right into the wall and in the end, he got me by half a stroke. It was a great race and I shook his hand afterwards. As a bonus, I beat my best time from this time last year by 4 and half seconds. I went a 2:54.83 from a 2:59.19 last year.

The next event up was 100m butterfly. Beforehand, I knew that this was going to be a painful event but I was prepared mentally for that. Since I was in the fastest heat, my strategy was just to swim my own race and not pay attention to anyone beside me because I knew that they would be going way faster. I dove in and started swimming.. the first 75 metres felt great actually. It was the last 25 that was a killer which I predicted more or less. By the 85 or 90 metre mark, my arms were struggling to get out of the water. I think my final time was a 1:26 which isn't all that great but I guess it's a starting point.

After the meet, we went back to Joe's parents house for a nice dinner and to relax. I also got a chance to meet up with Joe's sister, brother-in-law and niece. One of the first questions that his sister asked me when I told her that I was a teacher was if I could speak French. When I told her that I did, then she wanted me to practice with her daughter. That caught me a bit off guard but I was more than happy to speak to her in French. Her French was actually pretty good even if she did make one or two mistakes. I guess being a teacher, you can't help but notice these kinds of things. I also spent a considerable amount of time talking to Joe's brother-in-law who is pretty interesting. We had a lot in common as he is also originally from Toronto. We reminisced about the differences between life here and there... and I told him about some of my childhood memories...

Afterwards, we had a wonderful pork tenderloin dinner with some wine and it really hit the spot. I really enjoyed it. At the dinner table, Joe's dad told some really funny stories that just made crack up. One of the stories had to do with all the crazy things that they used to do way back in the day (1940s and 50s). A few crazy examples include a doctor prescribing patients to smoke cigarettes to calm them down (today it seems so ridiculous I had to laugh), using X-rays without any protection when you buy a new pair of shoes to see if they would fit etc. He also told us about some pranks that he pulled on some of his friends like exploding cigarettes and pretending that he ingested sleeping pills etc. Those stories will definitely stick in my mind for some time to come.

After dinner, we didn't do much except get ready for bed because we had to wake up early the next morning to catch the 8:00am ferry. That night as I was dozing off to sleep, the alarm clock radio on the refridgerator unexpectedly went off at midnight. I immediately woke up and become a little annoyed and went and turned off after a few minutes. That was definitely unexpected. When I woke up the next morning to go to the ferry, I felt a bit groggy and it took me a while to wake up but in any case, I was able to get my stuff together and we made the ferry just in the nick of time (I would say with about 5 or 10 minutes to spare). On the ferry ride back, half way across we spotted a pod of porpoises swimming in the water just off the side of the boat. I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like that before. I've seen whales and dolphins etc. but not that many all at once. I really enjoyed that.

We eventually got to the other side at Horseshoe Bay where Joe drove me back to my place. All in all it was a really fun weekend and I hope to do something similar again in the future