“If you set your goals ridiculously high and it’s a failure, you will fail above everyone else’s success.”
James Cameron

Not only was finals exciting, it was exhausting just watching!

Lavinya (The Bulldozer) Yap swam the 200 free relay, 100 freestyle (1st), 100 backstroke (2nd), 200 fly (1st), and 200 IM (1st)!!!
Heidi VanderWel swam the 100 freestyle (5th), 100 backstroke (1st), 200 fly (2nd) and 200 IM (1st)!!
Austin Barnard swam the 200 free relay, 100 freestyle (4th), 200 fly (2nd), 100 back (2nd), 200 breast (2nd)!!
Cole VanderWel swam the 200 free relay, 100 freestyle (8th), 100 back (8th), 200 IM (6th), 200 breast (3rd)!!

Other finalists were Matt Williamson in the 200 fly (5th), Alec Barnard 200 fly (5th), Brianna Lucien 200 fly (8th) & 200 breast (6th), Clara Cannon 100 back (8th) and Conner McGinnis 200 fly (8th)!

All in all, a very good day for WEST here in rainy Canadia!!

Follow the rest of the meet live here!

It’s raining hard here in Victoria but we still managed to pull off earning 22 swims in finals this evening!

Alyssa is nursing a sprained ankle she acquired while making the short walk from the hotel to the pool yesterday but she’s in good spirits and still participating in warm ups to keep sane!
She and her roomies learned about the ice bucket method of healing an appendage...not very fun, but very effective immersion in an ice bath for 10 minutes a shot does a great fast job at accelerating healing as well as killing pain and inflamation...

We got to deal with lots of nervousness and anxiety and being away from homeness but everyone is pulling together and doing great!
Our meet entry software does very fast conversions from short course yards to short course meters and our WEST swimmers are showing they are up to task in taking on those fast entry times!
Lot’s of best times going on here as well as hard work and learning to focus on racing when in a foreign environment...we’re setting these swimmers up for future successes!

More in a bit but now on to finals! Please enjoy the picture show above...

International exposure to our swimmers is something to keep them interested, motivated and open to learning about other cultures and people...and to enhance their racing experience of course!

We had quite the day planned: travel by hydrofoil on the Victoria Clipper to Victoria; walk about Victoria and have lunch, then practice at the meet pool....then bad weather cancelled the Clipper trip. Off to Victoria by bus, lunch at the ferry terminal and ferry to Victoria...no worries...a bit longer travel then planned but still funnish and we didn’t have to drive!

Everyone still in good spirits on the trip and upon arrival we headed over to the pool for a warm up before dinner.
We walked over to an italian restaurant for dinner and pigged out before settling in at the hotel for socializing, homework and much needed rest after a long days travels.

Cheri and Margaret, our chefs de cuisine, headed over to Costco and got enough food and supplies to last a month for a normal family or 3 to 4 days for 15 swimmers!

Competition starts in the morning with prelims at 9 AM so swimmers get to sleep in a bit the first day!

Last room check is done and everyone is in dreamland...my turn now.....more tomorrow after the first day of swimming!

Warm-Up Tips BY DAVID SWENSEN//Doctor of Chiropractic, Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist   Warm-up.  A proper warm-up may do more than just increase body temperature, which makes the muscles more pliable, and brings more blood (and therefore oxygen and nutrients) to the muscles when swimming.  It also appears that warming up helps improve the efficiency of the nerves that control your muscles. A study compared a group of swimmers who warmed up by actively swimming (active warm-up) compared to a group that warmed up by using a heated room, hot tub or hot shower (passive warm-up).  The active warm-up group performed better than the passive warm-up group during their first event.    What? No warm-up pool? While it is best to actively warm-up for your race, your body will benefit from staying warm if you don’t have access to a warm-up pool. One finding of the study may help you in between events when you have no access to a warm-up pool.  The researchers found that there was a greater performance benefit to keeping the body warm in-between events.  When there is no warm-up pool, this can be accomplished by taking a warm shower, or just wearing your team warm-ups.   Warm-down.  Several research studies have looked at the effects of warming down.  Resting after an event by just sitting or lying down is known as passive recovery.  Active recovery is when you perform exercise during a recovery period, such as when you swim down after your event.  Did you ever wonder how fast you should swim during your warm down?  Researchers found that it is better to swim at a faster pace during warm down than to just cruise and splash around.  It was found that warming down at a pace that is equivalent to your lactate threshold will help you recover more quickly and will result in better performance in your next event. If you don't have a high-tech lab at your pool to figure out how fast you have to swim to reach your lactate threshold, a good estimate of your lactate threshold would be to swim at the fastest pace which you could steadily hold for an hour.