Seattle Senior Open Day 1

Jon McKay and coach Ryan left for a competition in Seattle as many PCS swimmers headed on a mission to Kamloops for AAA's.  Jon was looking to get in some more competition before the upcoming National Championships in August, and is using this weekend as that preparation.  The meet is at the beautiful Colman Pool, located in Lincoln Park in South Seattle.  The pool is a 10 minute walk from the park's parking lot, and is located mere feet from the scenic beach.  An outdoor meet is rare for Canadian swimmers, and venues don't get much more beautiful than this one.

The weather was beautiful and sunny today for the first day of competition, during which Jon swam the 200 and 800 Freestyle events.  The meet is set up differently than most - it is a Long Course meet with no warm down pool, so between each event there was a 10 minute break for warm-up and warm-down time.  It is a three day timed-finals meet, so swimmers have to be sharp to make their efforts count this weekend.  Also, there were no blocks at the far end of the pool, but they still held 4x50 relays in which the transition would take place in the water, the next swimmer merely pushing off beside the arriving swimmer as they touched.  The music was blaring all day, people are camping on the grounds beside the pool, there was a concession stand outside - it was a very different atmosphere to most meets we get to see, but it's a fun one.

In the 200 Freestyle, Jon took it out a bit too hard and wasn't able to finish as he would have liked even though he won the event.  We decided to shrug it off and focus on the upcoming 800 free, as it was by far his better and more important event of the day.  Once the 800 came, Jon had a much better and more balanced race, finishing in 8:21.05, going out in 4:11 and coming back in 4:09.

Swimming the 400 freestyle tomorrow and the 200 butterfly on Saturday before returning home, Jon is looking to extend his 800's success to those efforts, while also counting on continued sunshine to brighten up the weekend.