The Madness Reaches Fever Pitch

The swim season is nearly over, but the intensity has ratcheted up in advance of the league finals. The kids had two-a-day practices last week, and have now backed way off, preserving their strength and energy for the final meet. In preparation for the ceremonial parade to the aquatic center at Campolindo High School later this week, we joined everyone else in festively decorating the car:


It has been quite a year for Michael. He has reduced his freestyle time from 36 to 25 seconds, and now is very competitive over the first half of each race (and no longer doggie-paddles to catch his breath at the end). His backstroke has improved dramatically over the course of the year as well. When we noticed that he seemed to be very quick during warmups while swimming the butterfly, we had him swim it at the last dual meet of the season last week. Once again, he dropped his personal best dramatically, getting closer to a "bronze" time with that stroke than any other. Unfortunately, a scheduling quirk will prevent him from swimming the fly at OMPA, but he is already looking forward to next year. He figures, probably correctly, that he will probably hit bronze times next year as one of the older kids in his division after a full season of competition.

And yet, his biggest accomplishment for the season was not in a race. At the beginning of "Survival Week" last week, the team held a swim-a-thon to benefit a swim team family whose mother is struggling with a recurrence of cancer. The workout for all of the swimmers was to swim as many laps as they felt comfortable doing during their regular workout time, which is 45 minutes for Michael's division. I figured that Michael would swim a few laps and call it a day. Not quite; he swam 44 laps ... 1,100 yards, more than half a mile.

I am officially old. My seven year old son has done something athletic that I cannot do.