Ryan Lochte & Conor Dwyer

Ryan Lochte Road to Phillips 66 Nationals

2014

Hi everyone!!!! Yes we know, long time no talk but we're here now and as you could see in the title the subject of our matter this time are Nationals and yep our beloved Ryan Lochte. As many of you swimming fans know nationals start this next Wednesday August 6th in Irvine California. So this week is going to be full of fun and exciting swimming action and we wanted to talk to you a little bit about it.

This has been a swimming season full of ups and downs for Ryan so let's make a fast recap of what happened. As you might remember past November Ryan got an injured knee with the already famous incident with an over excited fan in Florida and because of that and a couple of other issues he basically missed the 2013-2014 Arena Grand Prix series.

This year we haven't had the chance to see Ryan in a lot of completionsas we are used to. Because of the knee issue he missed the Minneapolis and Austin Grand Prix and then because of a really bad snow storm he got stoked in Charlotte longer than expected and couldn't make it to the Orlando Grand Prix on time so he ended up swimming only at the last day of the meet in a couple of races.

After Orlando Grand Prix Ryan was swimming in Mesa where he had a pretty decent meet but he injured his knee again while he was swimming the 200 IM so he wasn't able to swim the finals of the last day. The good news about it were that even though Ryan was not swimming he took the time to hang out with the fans who went to the meet to watch him swim and since that was not possible he tried to made it out by taking pictures and signing autographs to a lot of people and you know just being Ryan, as nice, kind and gentle with the fans as usual. We're sure you remembered the #LochteLine (that's was pretty long btw) so you know what we're talking about.

And since Mesa we didn't see a lot of swimming action for Ryan because he was recovering from the knee injury and then we didn't see him swimming in Charlotte neither but he is a great host and since Swim Mac was hosting the Charlotte meet Ryan (as the great host that he is) showed up at the meet with his lovely mom AKA Ike Lochte where he cheered for his teammates and of course hang out with the lucky fans that approached to him.

As expected he was not in Santa Clara. But he get back to the swimming competition action a few weeks ago in the Bulldog Grand Slam in Athens hosted by the university of Georgia.

Sadly for us unlucky people that were not in Georgia watching the meet live we couldn't watch the actual meet but we could see the results of it and we could follow the media coverage so down below we show you the results of the meets and completions that Ryan was part of over these last months. And we know is weird to see such a small table, I mean compared to the table of last year that was way bigger (and where he actually was the winner of the Grand Prix series) but this is enough for us to see how the scenario is. (Btw if you're curious and want to see the Road to Nationals of last year just click HERE).

Is not a secret to anybody that these results are not the ones we are used to see from the great Ryan Lochte but we have to bare with it and understand that he was not at his 100% this season because of the knee issue. Let's remember that he came back to the pool earlier than what doctors actually recommended to him so maybe that was one of the reasons because he suffered that injured in Mesa but he's been trying to fully recover since then and he's been really consistent with his training all this time.

SOOO we definitely haven't seen the last of him and you know Ryan, he can go from the bottom to the very top and just like the Phoenix rise from the asses (yep we know that's sounded very dramatic but we just got the feeling that was very appropriate haha). With that been said we can only wait great results this next Wednesday when he'll rock the pool at nationals.

He's entered in six events (100m free, 200m free, 200m back, 100m fly, 100m back and 200IM) which was honestly a surprise for us because after an injured that's been causing some troubles on his swims that might sound like to many events so there's a chance he might scratch one or two events but maybe he's actually going to swim all those events who knows we'll have to wait and see. I mean if we compared to last year nationals where he was entered in 11 events, 6 actually doesn't sound that crazy.

Nationals are seriously the big deal because the Pan Pacs and the world's team for next year are going to be selected in this meet so there's no way Ryan is not doing a great job. He's always full of surprises and we are sure he's going to give his best to make the team and yes pretty sure he's going to be selected in more than one event.

So there you have many reasons to keep track of Philips 66 Nationals 2014 and don't worry if you're going to be working or in school or for some reason you miss some detail you can follow us cause we're going to try to bring you all the details about Ryan and his performance at the meet. We can all go through the excitement together if you want. You guys know we love to share with you so don't even doubt on send us your thoughts or feelings or anything you want via twitter or Facebook or here.