Forgive the long diatribe, but this might be entertaining for you.

A while back, Kirt encouraged me to do a 1500M/Metric Mile masters swim meet. I thought, what the heck, that sounds cool. I swim the mile all the time for triathlons and I love the distance. And this would be something to aim for during the Winter. I asked Coach Tim for some tips and pretty much followed his advice. Just last week I went 21:49 and the goal was to just to go sub 22:30 so I felt pretty good heading in to it.

That said, I've never done a swim meet before and I was totally nervous. For added color, it turns out that my daughter Lily's swim coach was going to be seeded in the next lane to me. No way could I let her beat me! And Lily's water polo coach was in the heat ahead of me. Certainly I had to beat them!

So today was the day; the meet was at the Olympic Club in SF. My heat was at 9:23 AM.

Had a good breakfast and drove up and parked 3 blocks away at the suggested garage.

Walking out on the street, looking at my phone for directions to get to the club, some tweaker on a scooter says,

"Hey man, I lost my phone. Can I use yours to make a call?"

I mumbled "no" and kept walking to which he screamed, "Well FUCK YOU!".

Welcome to San Francisco! My nerves were now additionally rattled.

Walked on and finally found the club. The pool(s) are underground at the Olympic Club. It's amazing; there is a 5 lane wide 33 foot long pool which is where I warmed up in and then the 8 lane 25 meter pool for the race. It was nice to see Kirt (who had got me in to this) who directed me to the locker room; it was huge. Imagine how much that real estate is worth! That said, we weren't allowed to use the lockers so I had to stash my race bag on the pool deck with wallet, car keys and phone in it; added stressor - hope it wouldn't get stolen.

The meet had this very low-key vibe to it. There wasn't really any where to spectate. And, in truth, there weren't that many people around. I guess folks would just come and go after their heat (there were 14 heats - this was a 7 hour event). But my nerves were going nuts and I felt like throwing up; had never done a swim meet and didn't know what to expect. And it was really humid and even felt uncomfortably warm in the building.

Suddenly, it was time. I was in lane 4 between 55 yr old Stephanie (Lily's swim coach), and another 57 year old woman, Jana, who also swims at Burgess Masters where I swim. I thought there is no way Lily's coach is going to beat me, let alone Jana. Hell I am 5+ years younger!

Anyhow we walked down to our lanes and I asked the timer if I could dive off the side vs the dive board; she said yes as I'm not that practiced with diving off the board and didn't see how 1 or 2 seconds would really make a difference. Suddenly, the announcers said "Swimmers, on your mark!" Bang! To say I actually dove is probably an overstatement. More like just falling over. Of course, my goggles filled with water. F! Regardless, I kept up with Stephanie on my right going down and then Jana on my left on the way back for about...100 meters. I was going way too fast and sort of panicking and felt like I was going to drown. Tried to calm down and had to slow down, trying to do longer pulls. I focused on just keeping track of my laps and breathing. Things seemed to be getting better but, well that got f'd up, too. I was counting "13 lengths" when the lap counter said I was on 11! F! Who to believe? Of course, that becomes something you fixate on--which lap am I on? As a result, I was swimming sort of panicked, not looking down but looking forward (which flooded more water in to my eyes) which was likely not as efficient.

At the 500M/20 lap mark (by my count), I looked at my watch; it said 7:25. This was much slower than the 7:16 average pace I'd done just a few days ago. Oh well, I just want to survive this damn thing. The good news was that the lap counter must have checked something and realized they were off by 2, and they adjusted it so they were now tracking correctly. So less to fixate on there. However, the water in my goggles was increasing so I finally flipped them open to drain them, loosing more precious seconds.

Finally hit 1000M/40 laps, and calmed down a bit. Turned up the pace, inspired because both Stephanie and Jana had now lapped me at this point. I'm going to get through this though I thought!

Then it happened - my right calf cramped up. F! F! I had daughter Lily's words in my head "When I get a cramp, I just swim through it". Ha! So I tried not kicking on the right side then pushing off hard on the flip turn to try to get it to relax. I literally had thoughts of just DNFing. But how pathetic would that be?

Just 500 meters to go... right calf is letting go, feeling better. Stephanie is now next to me again (after lapping me) - I will keep up with her. And then... the left calf cramps. I resolved to just pull for the next 200 meters, dragging my sorry legs behind. Thankfully they finally relaxed.

I swam the last 100 kicking as hard as I could and just barely edged out the slowest swimmer in the heat by maybe 2 seconds.

Meanwhile, Stephanie and Jana were done around 2 minutes ahead of me and had already gotten out of the pool.

I was just gassed, hanging on the wall, trying to catch my breath.

There was no glory in finishing.

Meanwhile, the next heat had already come out on to the platform and they were waiting for me to get the F out of the pool to start the next heat-I was holding the whole thing up. Problem was, there was no way I could lift myself up with the diving board handles; my legs were cramping from calf to hamstring. I finally clambered up like clubbed Halibut banging around on the pool deck, hoping not to tear one of the timing cables. God I was ruined but I had to get out of there for the next heat! As I'm trying to stand I hear "Mr. Mein, I'd like to have a word with you".

F? What now? What did I do wrong? Did I miss a flip turn or not touch the timing pad? I don't think so. I apologized to him and said I was cramping everywhere. It felt like getting pulled over by a Police Officer. "Mr. Mein, you used your watch to time yourself. Participants are not allowed to use other devices for pacing or timing." The ref busted me for LOOKING AT MY WATCH at the 500 mark. Motherfucker was smiling the whole time like I just made his day busting me. At least he wrote down my time - a relatively pathetic 22:16, fully 27 seconds slower than what I'd done in practice just a few days ago.

So at least I wasn't the slowest in the heat, however, the time was DISQUALIFIED for the "watch infraction".

Kirt, so sorry I didn't stick around for your heat but I just wanted to get the heck out of Dodge and collect myself back at home.

Not sure if there was much learned in this whole thing but it's remarkable how being out of one's comfort zone (trying new things, no matter how similar) is such a shock.