Ryan entered in Speedo Southern Zone Championships March 19-22, 2009 and Megan Jendrick news

Ryan is not at the USA National Team training camp in California. Rather, he will be competing in the Speedo Southern Zone Championship this weekend. This is a long course event in Fort Lauderdale.

Several Olympic and U.S. National Team athletes will competing at this meet, including Fred Bousquet, Sebastien Rouault, Vlad Polyakov, Elizabeth Beisel, Caroline Burckle and J.P. Arnold.

Event results will be available at http://www.flaswim.com/

Ryan is entered in 9 events (psych sheet can be found at http://www.flaswim.com/pdf/meets/2009-03-19%20SCS/2009-03-19%20Psych%20Sheet.pdf)

Event 8 - 200m Free (Friday 3/20)
Seeded 1st

Event 10 - 100m Breast (Friday 3/20)
Seeded 2nd (Vlad Polyakov is seeded 1st)

Event 12 - 100m Fly (Friday 3/20)
Seeded 1st

Event 18 - 100m Back (Saturday 3/21)
Seeded 1st

Event 20 - 200m IM (Saturday 3/21)
Seeded 1st

Event 24 - 400m Free (Saturday 3/21)
Seeded 2nd (Sebastien Rouault is seeded 1st and J.P. Arnold is seeded 3rd)

Event 28 - 200m Fly (Sunday 3/22)
Seeded 49th (Fred Castro is seeded 1st)
Ryan doesn't have a LC meters time so his entry seed is based on a SCY time

Event 30 - 100m Free (Sunday 3/22)
Seeded 2nd (Fred Bousquet is seeded 1st)

Event 34 - 200m Back (Sunday 3/22)
Seeded 1st


Megan Jendrick News
In other swimming news, Megan Jendrick broke her leg at the U.S. national training camp in Chula Vista. The swimmers were training with the Navy Seals, and Megan slipped and fell on the obstacle course fracturing her fibula. This is definitely an unfortunate setback for her, but she has a positive attitude and plans to continue training for Worlds while she her leg is healing.
http://megan-jendrick.com/?p=76

Time Comparisons

To give Ryan's performance at the 2009 Missouri Grand Prix some perspective, here are some comparisons between Ryan's times in this year's and last year's events, the winning times in the 2009 NSW Open Championships held in Sydney, AUS this past weekend, and Ryan's all-time personal bests.

This comparison shows not only how fast Ryan is swimming right now, but also how good he is compared with some of the best swimmers in the world. Amazing.

100m Free
50.58 - 2009 Missouri GP
51.27 - 2008 Missouri GP
48.99 - Winning Time NSW Open (Sydney, AUS - February 2009)
48.65 - Ryan's All-Time Personal Best

200m Free
1:51.22 - 2009 Missouri GP
1:51.15 - 2008 Missouri GP
1:48.26 - Winning Time NSW Open (Sydney, AUS - February 2009)
1:45.61 - Ryan's All-Time Personal Best

400m Free
4:11.34 - 2009 Missouri GP
3:47.06 - Winning Time NSW Open (Sydney, AUS - February 2009)
3:49.25 - Ryan's All-Time Personal Best

100m Back
55.16 - 2009 Missouri GP
55:44 - 2008 Missouri GP
53.43 - Winning Time NSW Open (Sydney, AUS - February 2009)
53.37 - Ryan's All-Time Personal Best

200m Back
1:57.73 - 2009 Missouri GP
2:03.80 - 2008 Missouri GP
1:57.18 - Winning Time NSW Open (Sydney, AUS - February 2009)
1:53.94 - Ryan's All-Time Personal Best

200m IM
2:00.59 - 2009 Missouri GP
2:03.73 - Winning Time NSW Open (Sydney, AUS - February 2009)
1:55.22 - Ryan's All-Time Personal Best

400m IM
4:19.49 - 2009 Missouri GP
4:22.06 - 2008 Missouri GP
4:25.43 - Winning Time NSW Open (Sydney, AUS - February 2009)
4:06.08 - Ryan's All-Time Personal Best

100m Fly
53.84 - 2009 Missouri GP
54:26 - 2008 Missouri GP
51.81 - Winning Time NSW Open (Sydney, AUS - February 2009)
52.86 - Ryan's All-Time Personal Best

Missouri Grand Prix Results

Ryan performed extremely well at the Missouri Grand Prix this past weekend. I was out of town and could not follow the results closely, not that I would have been able to given swimnetwork.com's big time fail on providing updates. Thanks to the Daily Reezy for providing some real time info about the races.

Ryan won 4 golds and 1 silver, and finished 1st in both "B" finals he swam. Not bad for someone who was in the middle of hard training and wearing an old fashioned Speedo.

Here's how Ryan did in his 8 events:

200m Free: 1:51.22 (1st in "B" final - 5th best time overall)
No video yet

100m Fly: 53.84 (2nd in "A" final)
http://www.swimnetwork.com/videos/v/20090217/2009_missouri_grand_prix_of_swimming___men_s_100_meter_butterfly___a_final-16209.html

400m IM: 4:19.49 (1st in "A" final)
http://www.swimnetwork.com/videos/v/20090217/2009_missouri_grand_prix_of_swimming___mens_400_im___a_final-16208.html

200m IM: 2:00.59 (1st in "A" final)
http://www.swimnetwork.com/videos/v/20090217/2009_missouri_grand_prix_of_swimming___mens_200_im___a_final-16207.html

100m Back: 55.16 (1st in "A" final)
no video yet

400m Free: 4:11.34 (24th place - Prelims only)
no video

200m Back: 1:57.73 (1st in "A" final)
http://www.swimnetwork.com/videos/v/20090217/2009_missouri_grand_prix___men_s_200_meter_backstroke__a_final-16217.html

100m Free - 50.58 (1st in "B" final - 7th best time overall)
http://www.swimnetwork.com/videos/v/20090217/2009_missouri_grand_prix_of_swimming___men_s_100_meter_freestyle___b_final-16223.html

Missouri Grand Prix - Feb. 13-16 - Long Course Meters

**thanks Daily Reezy for the photo

Here are the 8 events Ryan has entered at the Missouri Grand Prix:

Friday, Feb. 13
Event 2 - 200m Free - Ryan is seeded 1st with a qualifying time of 1:45.61

Event 6 - 100m Fly - Ryan is seeded 4th with a qualifying time of 52.86 (Fred Bosquet is seeded 1st at 51.50, Masayuki Kishida is 2nd at 51.86, Matt Grevers is third at 52.10)

Event 8 - 400m IM - Ryan is seeded 1st with a qualifying time of 4:06.08

Saturday, Feb. 14
Event 12 - 200m IM - Ryan is seeded 1st with a qualifying time of 1:55.22

Event 18 - 100m Back - Ryan is seeded 3rd with a qualifying time of 53.37 (Nick Thoman is seeded 1st at 52.91 and Matt Grevers is seeded 2nd at 52.99)

Event 20 - 400m Free - Ryan is seeded 2nd with a qualifying time of 3:49.25 (Sebastien Roualt is seeded 1st at 3:48.70)

Sunday, Feb. 15
Event 26 - 200m Back - Ryan is seeded 1st with a qualifying time of 1:53.94

Event 28 - 100 Free - Ryan is seeded 7th with a qualifying time of 48.65. (Brent Hayden is seeded 1st at 47.56, GWG is 2nd at 47.78, Fred Bosquet is 3rd at 48.52, Matt Grevers is 4th at 48.53, Dominik Meichtry is 5th at 48.55 and Simon Burnett is 6th at 48.57)


http://www.csctigersharks.org/MOGrandPrix2009/MOGPpsychsheet_001.pdf

Meters (metres?) vs. Yards

I'm still planning to research information on Ryan's current training partner, Leith Brodie. However first I wanted to express some frustration with the fact that for short course races U.S. swimmers tend to compete in yards while the rest of the world competes in meters.

I'm as guilty as the next American of clinging to our old fashion units of measurement. If someone told me they were 195 cm tall and weighed 95 kgs, I could only guess as to what that really meant. Nevertheless, our antiquated use of yards in swimming is making it difficult for me to understand the times the swimmers are putting up at the European short course championships and to compare them to the times of the U.S. swimmers.

A few years ago I lived in London for 6 months and it became obvious that Americans do some very fundamental things differently than the rest of the world. For instance, in most of the world the 24-hour clock is used for time, the date is stated before the month i.e. today is 16/12 rather than 12/16, and the metric system is used for measurement. We are very isolated and stubborn to resist changing these things.

There are probably lots of pools in the U.S. that are 25 yards long. The YMCA pool I swam in as a kid was a yards pool. I realize if a pool is 25 yards long it may be cost prohibitive and perhaps impossible to lengthen it to 25 meters. However, the pool in Atlanta where the U.S. short course nationals were just held appeared to be a 50 meter pool that was shortened to 25 yards with a bulkhead. My vote is for the U.S. to get with the rest of the world on this issue. After all, we may prefer how our height and weight sounds under the metric system (definitely weight because 1 kg = 2.2 lbs)!

ETA: I just did the conversion on 195 cm tall and 95kg - it's almost 6 ft 5 in tall and 209 lbs, a football player sized person! It proves to me that I have a lot to learn about the metric system.