Whoa! Not that it’s a big deal or anything, but this European record came as a complete surprise! What was just as surprising was that I took nearly .6 off my preliminary time! I came to the pool tonight 2.5 hours before my race and did the usual routine that I do before my races – 45 minutes of stretching, 30 minutes of warm up in the pool, 30 minutes of massage, a 300 meter pre-race warm up to practice the things I’ve been thinking about, and then I put my racing suit on before  I go to the call-room. The only difference tonight is that I put a lot of thought into correcting my mistakes from this morning, and I put on Arena’s new suit for a try!

This morning I felt like a few things were missing from my qualification swim. First of all, I had the 2nd slowest reaction time off the block; secondly, my underwater kick was a bit slow and I had started swimming while I was 2 feet underwater; and finally, I didn’t put enough emphasis into my 2nd kick in every stroke. How did all of these things amount to .56 improvement? I don’t know… but I don’t want to give the suit too much credit although I’m extremely impressed with it. Are night swims really just faster? Unfortunately, the Olympics will have morning finals, so I’m just going to have to adapt to this and be a better morning swimmer. Its pretty important to learn from every race and I hope every time I race, that I’ll have another opportunity to make the small improvements necessary to be faster in the following opportunity. Tonight’s race seemed to have gone by so quickly that I might have to look at the video to see where I could improve a bit more… but one thing is for certain: Unbelievable and unexpected things always happen during the Olympic year. The competitions during the last month should be evidence enough of this.

I’m going to give the next opportunity my best shot. It is the 50 butterfly final, and this is where it counts, so new record or not, I just need to win!  Wish me luck…