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I wanted to send out a quick email to let you know that registration for the Bend Pentathlon meet, scheduled for this Saturday, closes at 11:59 pm tonight.  Online registration is here:

There are currently 4 of us who have expressed interest in going and 3 of us (Mike Dix, Barry and I) have registered are definitely attending.  If you have any interest at all, please let me know!  Barry and I (and possibly Mike Servant) will be carpooling to the meet and we could probably fit one more.  If more people express interest, we can take more vehicles.  We’ll likely leave sometime between 7am and 8am on Saturday morning and plan to stay the night in Bend after the meet.

The Bend Pentathlon meet is a very small, unintimidating meet, perfect for your first one.  This was my very first masters meet in 2011 and it got me hooked.  Also, we almost always go out for some fun after the meet, so perhaps that would be of more interest to people than the actual meet!

I’ll follow up after the Bend meet with results from our group of swimmers.

A quick note about the big meet I attended this past weekend in Los Angeles: Southern Pacific Masters Short Course Meters Southwest Zone Championships.  This is the largest short course meters meet on the west coast and draws people from all over the western half of the country.  There were 550 swimmers in attendance!  And quite a number of WORLD records fell this weekend.  I had 5 very good swims, but the highlight of the meet for me was the 1500 free on Friday.

I was the #8 seed, which put me in the outside lane of the last heat.  That means I was swimming with the fastest people in the western US.  Cool!  But also kind of demoralizing being the slowest one in the group!  The woman who was the top overall seed (yes, out of both women AND men) in the heat finished 1st overall, with a time of 16:50.92, which was a new world record for women 40-44.

I’m proud to say that she only lapped me twice!  I posted a new personal best time of 17:59.34.  That was my first time under 18 minutes!  And it bettered the Oregon record I set 2 weeks ago in Federal Way.  It also puts me at the top of my age group (men 40-44) in the US.  With only a couple meets left this year, I’m hopeful that it holds up for the top spot in the nation.  I’ll be anxiously watching the other (and last) big regional meet in Boston next weekend for results!

Though Oregon only had 6 swimmers in attendance, did no team relays (which score double points), and most of us didn’t do the full 6 events allowed, we still placed 12th overall as a team!  Team results here:

It was a great weekend in sunny and warm southern California hanging out with my Oregon and Californian swim friends and meeting other people from all over the western US.  Maybe next year we can get a few more of us SOMA swimmers down there and move up in the team placings a bit!

That’s all for now.

Keep swimming, my friends!