IGLA History Makers

As my esteemed teammate GCC wrote in his latest blog, he set a new record for the 1400 m freestyle. Congratulations! It was one helluva way to start of the first day of the competition. The next day was my first race: 50 m backstroke. Now all my life, I was always a breast and fly guy...until high school. When you have a team of 12 guys and 5 are really good at breast, you find something else to do. We tried distance: I was ruthlessly lapped every time. So I tried backstroke once for shits n giggles...just to get out of doing the 500. Who would've known...I was good at back (my arch-nemesis in childhood).

Fast-forward 13 years to Paris. "Take your mark (though it sounded like "Gen..tlemen" with the french accent)...BEEP". I, being a flawless Aries, have a great start (a relic of my days as a diver) and underwater kick, surface and am swimming great...neck and neck. I see the backstroke flags, take my three strokes, then flip on my stomach. BAM!! The wall is still 10 m away. FUUUUCK ME! Somehow I mistook the 15 m line across the pool (where you must surface for backstroke) for the flags at the last 5 m. So there I am...middle of the pool, turning onto my stomach. Waaaay to impress all the hotties in the crowd with my backstroke prowess. Luckily, I wasn't disqualified, but ended up with a bad time :-( One more IGLA bonehead record, I'm sure! From now on, I'm going back to breast.

Luckily the next swims went much better. To be continued...