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Paralympics


The NZA

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Well thanks Jax, Lindsay, and IC! Sadly, they didn't take your advice Jax..I was not crowned queen of the World Cup! But I did have a good time nonetheless--it was a REALLY laid back trip compared to Athens where everyone is so stressed out and pressured that everyone is cranky and snaps at the littlest things..this was more of a huge media production for Britain....we had commercial breaks in the middle of the meet--it was odd. Not to mention how the Brits do their prelims/finals..usually prelims are fairly early morning and then finals at night so you have time to rest/eat/chill out before finals. Well they run their prelims from 10 to 12 and then warmups start at noon for finals! Finals start at 1 so we had to eat this not so good bagged lunch at the pool and then swim again.

My race went pretty well...this semi-crazed girl from Turkey tried to be intimidating (I guess! :D ) by giving me all these crazy stares in the "ready room"..it's this room where they marshall you right before you march out for your race..it's always a tiny room with just you and your competitors and some people go to extreme measures to psych you out....some people jump up and down in your face yelling random things in their language......I find it amusing but not much else---especially when I have my lil headphones to keep me company!

 

SO anyways--then along came my race. My coach did a race analysis on me which is this software with a laptop hooked up to the timing systems and it keeps track of how many times I breathe, velocity, underwater time, turn time, how much I get from my push off/dive, etc. She said all my #s were well and it felt like a good race. I beat a girl from Poland I didn't beat in Athens and moved up to being ranked 7th in the world so all was well UNTIL I went to the warm down pool and then some judge (never figured out which) put in a slip that I had arched my back on a stroke and downward movement of the feet (instead of out)....So they DQed me :D ...I wish I knew when they thought I did it just so I could know..we did ask a few questions because I physically can't arch my back (hence the steel rod and wires preventing that) but they said they guessed that my hips came up enough to send my feet down....but again they couldn't say where because these judges aren't the ones that saw it.....AND Team USA has this kinda lame policy in my opinion that we don't appeal decisions even if we don't agree or think we could win...we just don't appeal. So-final result. I got DQed! But I still got more international experience and a chance to swim against the rest of the top 10 in the world in this event. So--it wasn't all bad.

 

My next big meet will be in July but by then I have to find some small ones to swim at around here to qualify for..I don't have a team so if anyone's up for some small mini-road trips to watch a lil swimming action--I'll let yall know when they are (once I know!) Thanks for all your support!

Kara

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Oh it's alright Jax~not as bad as it seems..I'm kinda the DQ queen just because of the way my stroke has to be...The rods in my legs make my range of motion different than most doing breaststroke so sometimes the judges make a bigger deal of it and sometimes they don't....usually there's not really much I can do so I don't take it personally anymore! and yeah it was a pretty good trip.

 

I've got another lil trip tomorrow. I'm flying to tampa to run a swim clinic with another guy on our team for little kids with disabilities. It should be fun and I get paid pretty good (and travel arrangements)!! I'm looking forward to it. I'll be back Saturday night to the good ole MIA.

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