Wrapping up the 2025-26 swim season
The 2025-2026 swim season has come to a close, but I am already back in the water training for all of the exciting competitions the 2026-2027 season has to offer.
Before we start looking forward to next season, I would like to share my experiences from the National Champs, a clinic I ran and how I decompressed afterwards. The 2026 National Championships ran from July 28th to August 1st in Irvine, CA and I will start off by talking about that!
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What’s Happening?
US Nationals
I started off the 2026 National Championship with a new best time in the 200m butterfly by 0.02! I had a strong finish in prelims where I passed the defending world champion, Luca Urlando, in the final 50 enroute to a 1:55.16. This placed me 1st going into finals and was the first time I beat Luca head-to-head. In the evening, I paced the 200 right where I wanted to be at the 150 mark, but the race caught up to me and I fell to 7th. The next day, I snuck into the A final of the 200m freestyle in 8th place with a 1:46.88 (just off my PB of 1:46.58 from last summer). Once again at night, I was right where I wanted to be at the 150, but didn't finish very well. Even adding a tenth of a second from the morning, I still moved up to 5th place... my highest ever finish at a National Championship meet! In the 100m butterfly on the third day, I was right next to Caeleb Dressel and failed to capitalize on his wake. I went 52.26, barely missing the A-final. At night, I raced to 10th place. I took day four of the competition off... I raced every single session at the 2025 National Champs and didn't need to do that again. On the final day of competition, I decided to renew my best time in the 100m freestyle with a time trial. That event always conflicts with the 200m fly, so I often only swim the butterfly race.
Unfortunately, I did not get the opportunity to race any 4x100m relays at the Rhine Ruhr World University Games last summer because my 100m free PB of 49.00 was from October 2023 at the Santiago Pan American Games. I had been 48.1 on multiple relays throughout 2023 and 2024, so it was highly frustrating to not get a single chance during WUGs. I will not ever let that happen again, so I threw down a new PB 48.67 in my time trial. This was a refreshing swim and a fantastic way to cap off the meet.
Chengdu Clinic
Shortly after wrapping up my swim season, I flew out to China to run a clinic with Sichuan Huayang school. This was a five-day, ten-session marathon where I went into great detail sharing what helped me get to where I am today in this sport. I demonstrated drills in all four strokes (plus IM), dedicated sessions for one-on-one coaching with each athlete, worked on starts and turns, and spoke about a variety of topics. These included proper recovery techniques, team mentality, balancing life, racing mentality/visualization and we even went through my entire pre-meet warm up.
This was an invigorating experience, and I hope all the athletes came away with some new tidbits to implement in their day-to-day training.
Resting up
Getting a full mental reset before going back into grueling training has been an important strategy for my longevity in swimming. You probably already guessed how I went about doing that... spending time on the boat. I got what I needed to be ready for next season and spent quality time with friends. We even took the old fishing boat out and launched it with the tractor!
Looking Ahead
I am now getting ready for the Swimming World Cup and putting myself in a strong position to qualify for the Short Course World Championships in December. The World Cup will run from October 1st to 17th in Baku, Azerbaijan, Tashkent, Uzbekistan and Astana, Kazakhstan. This is a part of the world I have not visited before, so I look forward to taking in the culture and seeing the sights!
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