More Records

More Records

by Jay Unver

(Lehrton, MS) Zane Hodge continues to bury Randy Beets in a pile of Big ASS world records. I followed him to the pool Thursday and Friday mornings without seeing any attempts. But he alerted me Friday afternoon that Saturday might bring some fresh charges at setting new marks. It did.

"I've been running a lot," Hodge explained. "And working a lot this week. That has been sapping a lot of energy from the pool. But after being off the road for over two years, I can't say no to my impulse to run."

Friday, Hodge took a rare easy day with no running whatsoever and only a very short dip in the pool. The slowdown had its effect and Saturday morning rolled around with Hodge ready to throw down in the water.

Hodge opened his session with a 1,500 meter swim. Although he could have presented that as a record, since almost all the Big ASS records for both long and short course are open, Hodge declined. "I will only present an honest attempt to swim my best," he explained to me. "That was a warmup and a training set."

Then Hodge swam 4 X 50 for time. His fastest, 44.46 is a new Big ASS best. "That's not very good," he mumbled appearing to be disappointed. "But I will break it on another day." Hodge then turned his attention a 300. "That distance is open and it will give me a good training stimulus to swim that far hard today."

So Hodge was off while I observed and timed. His breathing was labored when he touched the wall 5:20.96 later. Hodge now owns the Big ASS world long course meters swimming time trial records in

50
100
150
200
250
300

Beets, who claims to have challenges to swimming long course because of his local pool's regulations, holds no records, not even at short course.