After a break of more than 12 years, I restarted swim training in May 2025. More than 13 years after my last race meet, I (re)entered the 2025 Pacific Masters Swimming Kerry O'Brien Short Course Meters Championships in Walnut Creek, CA. I registered for only two events, and needed to guesstimate entry times based on short course yards training at the Chinatown YMCA in San Francisco. My local YMCA forbids diving so I couldn't practice dive-starts, nor properly account for them in my entry times.
In 2010 I raced at the same event and had a bad experience. I hoped for better in 2025. I'd spent the summer re-learning 21st century swimming and nutrition, and trying to put what I could into practice. I was eager to see how much that could counteract my old(er) age, and lack of training and race practice. One study shows swimmers become about 0.6% slower per year. If that applied to me, I could expect to be about 8% slower than I was in 2012. My entry times were significantly slower than that margin. Did I sandbag too much? (Two men I raced against in 2012 maintained their fast speeds for about ten more years! [1] [2]).
I competed without a club affiliation. YMCA SF has a masters team, but they don't train at my local pool. My old club, USF, is full, and has a waitlist to (re)join.
Pre-event registration suggested my age group was filled with fast swimmers.
In mid-July I tweaked behind my right knee. General hamstring and calf tightness and cramping issues held me back from late July through September.
I ate my normal breakfast around 9am, and snacked on dates and Gu Roctane before my races started around 1pm.
- 100 SCM Freestyle. 1:03.05 (splits: 29.20, 33.85) - video (6th of 12 in age group)
My guesstimated entry time was 1:13.00, about 19% slower than my 2009 time: 1:01.48. Improvements after race-registration in late September, meant I expected to race around 1:08.00. This meant I would need to break from my heat competitors by several seconds - I couldn't use them to pace myself unless someone else also overestimated their time.
My dive-start (my first in 13 years) sucked. I partly displaced my goggles, and didn't get any depth. My final time was about 3.2% slower than in 2009. I think I could get close to 1:02 with a better dive and without leaking goggles. - 50 SCM Butterfly. 31.64 - video (3rd of 6 in age group)
I hadn't raced this event since college (or longer, so maybe since the 20th century?). My guesstimated entry time was 0:34.00 which I expected to be close to what I would race on the day.
My dive was better, and my race felt better than I expected, which means I should have pushed harder on the first 25m. :-)
- Suit: Speedo Endurance
- Googles: Speed Vanquisher 2.0
- Cap: Tyr x2
Personal notes for my next event:
- Find somewhere to practice dive-starts.
- Fix my freestyle turns:
- my head is too far forward after the push
- my push isn't straight, it veers right
- I'm raising my head too soon
- Andy Grant casually clocking 50.93 for the 100m free (just half a second off the USMS record) and making the rest of the field look slow was something to behold.
- Both my heats placed me in lane 1 with no-shows in lane 2.
- The pool lane 5 has a bizarre start-block setup. That block is almost over the lane rope between lane 5 and 6. I never want to race from that lane!
- The pool also still doesn't have backplates on their starting blocks (not that I've ever trained to use one!) (Backplates have been legal since 2008.)
Results:
- December 6th, 2025: MEMO’s Thrice is Nice, San Leandro
- 50 SCY Freestyle
- 50 SCY Butterfly
- 100 SCY Freestyle
- 200 SCY Freestyle
- February 7th, 2026: USF Valentine's Affair, San Francisco
- 50 SCY Freestyle
- 100 SCY Freestyle
- 50 SCY Butterfly
