Stanford Redoux

Well, I completed my sweep of placing exactly how I did at the 2006 Worlds Championships at Stanford with a second place finish in the open water swim. The winner isn't someone that swam any of the pool events. She must have only signed up for the open water. I haven't seen the times yet, so I'm not sure how far ahead of me she was. I gotta confess, I'm a little disappointed with another second place finish. My goal for this meet was to win *something*. I wasn't particulary choosy about which event I wanted to win, just at least one. I know it sounds a little odd to be disappointed with second place at the World Championships, but my competitive spirit wanted a first place finish. If I had swum good times, I might be happier with my placings, but since my times weren't all the great, either, I'm disappointed. Oh well.
We've had a great trip so far, seen some really cool things, had some good adventures (including almost getting a $300 speeding ticket today...thankfully the cop was in a good mood and took pity on the foreigner and only gave me a "caution"), so I really can't complain. And, we're off to Sydney tomorrow morning! Harbour Bridge here I come!

The girl on the right in the above picture is Alicia from San Francisco. We got to know each other this week by swimming mostly the same events. We also ran into her twice outside the competition. This photo was taken about 5 minutes before hopping in to the slightly cold water. And for those that know me and water temperature, if I thought it was cold, it was pretty dang cold. But, once the race started, the water temp felt great.



I'm somewhere in this mass of swimmers. Perhaps the second one since that's where I finished up. But, I think there were 2 girls ahead of me at the start, one may have been in the younger age group, so I'd guess I'm the third one in this photo. Who really knows.