Bermuda Olympic hopeful Lisa Blackburn reflects her performance at the Coral Springs Holiday Classic.
“For me, the first day included 3 races one after the other. I chose to swim three races so close together to get more of a training effect out of the day. Racing, warming down then getting up and racing again provides a great training effect in that you must race fatigued and “find a way” to race tired. I think I did a pretty good job considering my last race of the day was only the 2nd time EVER that I have gone under 27 seconds from a flat start in the 50 free (and I did it after racing 2 other events!).
Day 2 was much of the same…3 races within 20 minutes of each other. I started the day with the 100 Freestyle. To be honest, I was little unsure of how this would go considering this is not an event I swim very often, but I knew that with my training times I should be able to go under the one minute barrier. To my surprise I raced to a new lifetime best time going 57.20!!! My previous best was a 58.6 from 2005 at the Dash for Cash in Guelph, Ontario. Unfortunately, I missed the Masters World Record held by Erika Braun, by only 0.12 seconds. Never in my wildest dreams could I imagine that I would be closing in on the 56 second range for this event! I do have to give credit to Claire Donahue, 2012 Olympic Gold Medalist for pushing me to this new best time. She swam in the lane beside me and before the race started she told me that not only would she be swimming the event, but that she would be doing Butterfly! Now if you know swimming, Freestyle is supposed to be a faster stroke than Butterfly, so I had a little extra pressure on myself to try and beat one of the best Butterfliers in the world…swimming Freestyle. Claire swam an awesome race and went half a second faster than in her Individual 100 Butterfly swim from the day before. I timed my finish perfectly and out-touched her by only 0.3 seconds. Claire swam a 57.50 for the 100 Butterfly!, which is an amazing time!!! It was definitely a bonus having Claire beside me, as we both pushed each other to swim great races.
The 100 Breaststroke was next and I raced to a 1:12.53. I have been stuck in the 1:14’s for this event for a while now so to breakthrough and be less than a second away from my Bermuda National Record is good progress. My last individual event of the day was the 50 Butterfly where I swam to another lifetime best going 29.34!!! I have now raced to 5 lifetime best times in the past 3 months, performing at least one best time in each of my first 3 competitions this year. This goes to show that age really is just a number.
I must say that swimming fast is fun and going lifetime best times in my 40’s is what I am working for every day! Training is tough, challenging and motivating all at the same time. We have a great team and we complement each other very well. For the first time in a long time, I feel like I belong somewhere and that I can contribute to and give back to my teammates and mentor the younger kids on the club. My coaches have also been amazing and they continue to challenge and encourage me to keep getting faster every day. I love getting up every morning and walking to practice, where I get to train with amazing people who I also get to call my friends! I couldn’t do any of this without them.”
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