Eney and the mile

So, one of my athletes, Eney jones, is a great open water swimmer. She is the reigning Masters Open water World Champion. One of the goals of this year was for her to do the Open Water national Championships in Florida next month. Here's the problem...USA swimming will not let you use 10K Open water times to qualify for the 10K Open Water nationals. You have to use a pool mile time. Brilliant.

The problem is that Eney is a great open water swimmer but is not as good in the pool nor over the "sprint" distance for her of 1 mile. SO we have been trying to get a Long course meter mile in. We found one on Sunday. However, the cut off date is Friday, yesterday, and the mile is on Sunday. USA swimming being USA swimming says there is no leeway. So we time trialed a mile at the ACES meet last night....the bad news was it was 10PM at night, in the dark, in a barely lit pool.

She went well, 18:34, but not quite there. A pretty great effort for 10PM at night though. She is going to do it again on Sunday, but it will really piss me off if we make it then.