BB Championships Part 2

This picture is our "setup" at the meet today. The Palo Alto Natatorium is large with plenty of seating, so we took the opportunity to spread out. Notice Natalie hiding behind her Starbucks cup. It has become our pre-swim meet ritual to get her a Double Chocolaty Chip Frappucino and an Old-Fashioned Doughnut from Starbucks. Notice the lunch bag with drinks and snacks, including the new Dole Fruit Smoothie Shakers. Natalie loves smoothies, and this one we can bring along. There were also sandwiches, one turkey, salami, and cheese one for me and one peanut butter and jelly sandwich for her. That used to be her favorite, but she didn't end up eating it. She strongly preferred picking up something on the way home--Popeye's spicy chicken tenders. Also notice the red bag which contained her Kindle Fire HD and my iPad, along with a few other snacks. Those didn't really get eaten today either because we went home between the morning session and the evening session. That worked out better for Natalie. Even the girl who gave up naps when she was two years old took a nap today.

The big news for us today was that Natalie not only beat her previous time (37.00 sec) on the 50 yard butterfly, she got an "A" standard time to boot. In the prelims she had a time of 36.19 seconds for a first place finish in her heat and a second place finish overall. In the finals, she brought her time down even farther, to 35.91 seconds and a first place finish. She out-touched second place by 0.08 seconds, followed by third place by 0.04 seconds, and followed by fourth place by 0.02 seconds. I realize just now as I'm looking this stuff up for this blog post that it was a tight finish. Good thing they used electronic touch pads. Needless to say, it was an exciting but definitely satisfying finish. She came from behind as she usually does. Patrick and her coach have both told her that if her starts were better, she would do even better. For today, she is definitely satisfied with the results. She gets a gold medal!

I'll just recap the rest of the day. She swam in the 100 yard freestyle and brought her time down from 1:18.20 to 1:16.81 in the prelims  (15th place) and down to 1:16.54 in the finals (13th place) for a total drop of 1.66 seconds. She swam in the 200 yard IM and brought her time down from 3:16.61 to 3:11.23 in the prelims for a total drop of 5.38 seconds. She placed 13th and made the finals but we decided to "scratch" that race so we could go home earlier plus it was unlikely that she was going to get much lower than that without some additional work. She was actually disappointed with that time because she really wanted to get a better time. She is much harder on herself that we are.

One more piece of good news, though, is that she was in the 200 yard Medley relay swimming the butterfly and her team placed first. The second place team's butterfly person was quickly catching up to her, but she managed to hold her off and the person who swam the last leg (freestyle) won the race. Lots of excitement, and lots of time spent at the Palo Alto Natatorium. We plan on relaxing tomorrow. Thank goodness we've got a holiday from school and work.