Swimming Up

First off, let me apologize. Today's planned topic was an informative, yet hilarious (I wish) description of the wildlife we encountered in Alaska. Unfortunately someone who shall remain nameless (1) accidentally erased all my Alaska pictures off the computer when he loaded his own.

Yes. The man who is singlehandedly responsible for supporting our entire family with his job in the computer industry actually gave me this explanation: "The iMac cannot physically support two sets of Alaska pictures. It gets too confused."

Note to self: Check out adding google ads to blog.

So until we get this straightened out, I'm afraid you will have to learn all about competitive swimming in Northern Virginia and a scary practice known as "swimming up."

Swimming up is when a swim team has a plethora of one age group (like 8 and under girls) and practically no kids in the next age group (in this example 9-10 girls) Every Saturday meet has one heat of each age group / sex / stroke. So for example each team sends their 3 strongest 9-10 girl backstrokers to that heat. (2)

With me so far?

But to keep things fair (and more kids involved) each swimmer is limited to 2 races. So sometimes a team only has three swimmers in an age group and cannot physically fill all their lanes for all 4 strokes. Rather than leave a lane empty, a younger swimmer fills in.

The logic is that maybe the other team will have a strep throat epidemic or a community-wide camping trip or maybe just get really really lost and they will leave lanes empty. And then the younger swimmer might even place and win points for their team. It happened to Jake last year; at 9 he swam 13/14 boys breaststroke. One kid didn't show up, one kid DQ'd (3) and Jake swam his fastest and placed third.

(Jake's entire swimming career is actually based on a willingness to swim wherever needed. He is one hell of a team player. )

Tomorrow Noa will swim in her first A meet. After two summers in the minors, Noa is going big time. Her first event is the 8 and under girl breaststroke. And then my 42 pound seven year old will be swimming up. 11/12 girls butterfly. 50 meters of butterfly. Can you do 50 meters of butterfly? Cause I sure as hell can't.

This is from Noa's last meet of last season.
Please note the unusual dive technique where she stays mostly vertical to the ground.

1) But I'm married to him and his initials are PCSguy.
2) Swim meets typically take about eleven years start to finish.
3) Disqualified