Atlanta Rainbow Trout deserves an award for originality when it comes to swim meet trophies.  Their Spring Splash High Points trophy is quite cool, but their St. Nick’s High Points trophy is a hoot!  Yes, it’s a waving jolly ol’ St. Nick.  I don’t even celebrate Christmas, but as soon as I saw that trophy, my determination to win high points for the meet was reaffirmed.  Jolly ol’ St. Nick was going to be mine.

The year started with my usual list of goals; none of which included winning the Georgia Championship Series.  I’m not the fastest swimmer in my age group, after all, so I didn’t think I would have a chance.  But, as you may have seen in a previous post, I ended up winning high points at the Spring Splash and was told I had a good chance of winning the entire series.  So, as of April, I was on a mission.  I won the long course meet, in Athens, and then won at the Georgia Games Open Water swim.  At that point, I had eliminated my competition for the Georgia Championship Series, however, I was determined to win in style and make a clean sweep of it at yesterday’s St. Nick’s Short Course Meters meet, at Georgia Tech.  So, I entered the maximum five individual events, swimming my three best (50, 100, and 200 Breaststroke), and rounding out with two distance events (400 Individual Medley http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkk525w-Qk0&feature=share&list=UUaJqJScxsYtclOJAW-i-gpw and 400 Freestyle; something my coach feels I would be best at if I train for distance, rather than sprints.  To add to the heap, I was placed in two relays; swimming lead-off in a Women’s 200 Freestyle Relay and breaststroke in the Women’s 200 Medley Relay.

Although my times suffered due to the heavy workload, I was happy to win every event, including our relays.  OK, some of those events were uncontested by anybody in my age group, but I had competition in others.  In all, there were seven of us in my age group.

It was great seeing so many of my Killer Whales teammates also win high points awards; I went around with my Santa giving high-fives to their Santas.  (See photo; Santa does have one hand in the high-five position!).

My Forumite buddies (U.S. Masters Swimming Discussion Forums) also won high points in their age groups; definitely a meet highlight for me, given the pre-meet discussion we had online in the days building up to the meet.  Frank Thompson (on right) came all the way from Michigan, Swimosaur (Judd Jones) drove out from Tennessee, and ekw (Ellen Wilson) drove over from Alabama.  They each now had their own Santa to accompany them on their travels home.  And, as you can see by our final picture, our Santas gave each other a kiss goodbye…

‘Tis the story of Jolly ol’ St. Nick, who now holds a place with my other awards, on top of the wine cabinet, in my home office.

And, that, my friends is (almost) the end of my year as a baby geezer.  I will soon be turning 51, on Inauguration Day, so I will no longer be the baby geezer; just a geezer.  But, later this month, I will be joining a few of my Forumites in swimming 1,000 yards continuous butterfly, to close out 2012.  I swam 2,000 yards continuous fly last June, so I know I can do it!