NER's

I've done a sort of "outside in", this weekend with the Great Scottish Swim yesterday, and the North East Regional Championships at Durham today. A sort of reverse of the weekend of the Great North Swim.

The event took place in one day, with 4 sessions so it was pretty full on, and to try and add a chunk of yardage to get back on track towards my years total of half a million metres, for a change I actually swam down partially seriously.

The swims weren't brilliant but I thought that I'm making progress and they were better than the years earlier efforts. The North East Region have an interesting pricing structure there's a flat entry fee of twenty quid for unlimited entries, now I thought I was a bit of a skinflint entering 8 events, but Everton's Mark Jones went all out for value for money swimming, entering all 15 events!

My performances deteriorated over the course of the day, especially the 200 free, as my 200 split in the 400 was almost 2 seconds faster.

The meet was friendly, well run and saw some interesting officiating decisions with a competitor being stood down off the blocks for wearing two cossies, (she was given the chance to go and take one off). I was glad of the extra few minutes rest and an interesting dispute about the definition of starting grips in backstroke. ( Sometimes we can be a bit anorakish can't we?)

Not that anyone's interested but the yardage and times were.

800 Warm Up
400 free  5.20.17*
240 swim down
50 Breast   39.87
100 Free 1.12.48
300 Swim Down
200 IM  3.05.88
100 Back 1.31.91
300 Swim Down
200 Free  2.39.69
50 Back  42.78
50 Fly  40.17
700 Swim Down
3440 Metres total

*200 split 2.37.70