Australia...Competition Day 1

I realize that I have been back in the USA for over a week now…and I’m just getting around to writing a story about my awesome trip to Australia for the Lifesaving World Championships. Let me first put in a bunch of excuses why it’s taken me so long: had to get back into training…needed a lot of time to catch up on sleep…school work was required to be finished…laundry needed to be washed…my 23rd birthday needed to be celebrated (all weekend long:)…some of my friends asked for rides to the airport…a backlog of e-mails were waiting for answers…my new bike needed to be assembled and correctly fit (I will post photos of my beautiful new Blue ASAP)…etc!
Here we go with a recap of the trip and competition: On Wednesday, February 8th, around 3pm, Jasmine and Jessica drove me to the COS airport. It was sad to be leaving for so long, all my friends and training, but I knew that summer and warm, sunny beaches were awaiting me. I had such high hopes for myself on the plane trips, I had homework to complete, books to read, things to do…but all I managed to do was take some really long naps! The flight from COS to LAX wasn’t too long…but the wait in the LAX airport was ridiculous…I had about 5 hours to ‘chill’ until we started boarding the Qantas flight to Melbourne! I did get to met a few of my new teammates in the airport…they were all really cool people…but we all spent most of the flight sleeping and keeping to ourselves (understandable when you’ve got 15 hours through the night on a plane!).
We arrived in Melbourne at 9:30am and after the inevitable wait for rental vans, we were on our way to Geelong…the city where we were staying for the pool competition events. It was a small city, very old looking…but with a nice new 50 meter pool…built for the Commonwealth Trials about 1 month prior.
The first few days in Australia were dedicated to training, practicing the events, figuring out the relays, visiting the beach where we would compete later in the week, and just hanging out. The USA team was a really cool group of people…lots from the West Coast (Cali.) who knew each other from other competitions and local training (Blaine, Andy, Renee, Micha)…both our sprint runners, Dana and Matt, were from the East Coast (NJ & NY)…Kicker was a swimmer like me who just missed out on the 2004 Olympics...Tilly, Brian, and Shane were American citizens that lived in Australia for one reason or another (mostly b/c training for this sport is easier there)…and the coolest teammate was Maggie, she’s training for Beijing 2008 in kayaking IN CHULA VISTA! I’m heading to the Chula Vista OTC in 5 days…we had a great time getting to hang out in Australia and we are very excited to hang out for 2 months when I’m in Chula…she’s promised to take me surfing at all the cool spots in Southern California and let me try her racing kayak (which I know I’m going to tip over in so I’m going to show up in my swim suit!).
On to the competition part of the trip (yes, we really did compete, not just hang out on the beaches and explore Australia!). The pool events started on Tuesday, February 14th…my ‘best’ event was the first event of the whole competition (and by ‘best’ event, I mean the one that is closest to a normal swimming event and my best chance to win)…the day before, I had Scott Petersohn time me in a test 200 meter obstacle swim at about 75% because I wanted to at least practice the whole event one time before I had to do it in competition! The USA coaches had made sure that I knew what the “world record” in this event was before I went to Australia…2:11. My practice swim was 2:15…I didn’t want to brag, but I knew that I had it in the bag!
Come race morning…when the meet finally started (2 hours after scheduled start time) I broke the world record in my Prelim heat with a 2:10.7! No better way to start a meet…and team USA was pretty pumped! Unfortunately, the meet was not run very smoothly, and the estimated time schedule was thrown out the window…the 2 hour break between prelims and finals was canceled when prelims actually finished 3 hours late! So we went right into finals…and I was again the first event…with ‘lunch’ sitting very heavy in my stomach (I ate it 30 minutes before the finals started) I managed to bust out a bit faster 200 meter obstacle swim, break my world record again: 2:10.3 and finally become a World Champion! I was also the anchor leg of the Rescue Medely relay…the last event of the evening…and the USA women swam to an awesome bronze medal performance! Of course the men had to out-do us in the next heat by winning and setting another World Record…so Team USA was off to a solid first day…I think we were sitting in 4th place when we finally headed back to the hotel!