Victory (over Upstream)! Oh So Sweet!

Perfectly timed!

But firstly, congratulations to Upstream, you guys did so well to come in 2nd place, really! And don’t think of second place as being the first loser; just look at it as room to improve.

The meet was actually a Dutch inter-club event, probably about 100-150 swimmers in total. How we (GSA) actually won is somewhat of a mystery, as none of us swam really fantastic times. Mine were all a couple of seconds above my PB times, although I heard a rumour that I swam a 30-sec 50m free in the mens relay, which I am hoping to confirm at training tonight.

Highlights from the weekend include:

  • Being asked if I was from Brazil. Huge compliment as all Brazilian people are hot. I may or may not have been wearing a fruit hat and shaking a pair of maracas at the time, but it probably wasn’t that.
  • Getting into a taxi after leaving the official party and asking the driver to take me to the Holiday Inn - to which he responded: “You mean that one?” and pointed to the hotel across the street. I considered still making him drive me there, but decided the hole was deep enough.
  • Competing in a relay in which the the team member swimming before me had experienced a full butt-cheek-exposing speedo-malfunction, thus resulting in me laughing hysterically as I entered the water and attempted to swim a decent 50m breast.
  • Completely missing my signature event, the 200M individual medley, despite being approximately 20m from the starting block as my name was called and the race commenced. In what I now see as a desperate attempt at sabotage, someone from Upstream cleverly asked me a question about my favourite topic (myself) which naturally turned into my life story and forced me to miss the event. Very clever indeed.
  • Beating Upstream.

Unfortunately the usual swim meet suspects Robert, Yolanda and Anne Marie were all absent from this meet. Against all odds, I ended up having a good time without them and even getting to knew a few others in the team a little better.

A selection of my photos can be seen by clicking below, although they are just from my iPhone’s 2MP crappy camera, which is definitely not the best aspect of the device.