Binge's adventures in Eindhoven Day 4 (accreditation where it's due!)

Andreas Prayer Competitor's Steward par excellence

Now I've been doing these meets for long enough now that you would think I'd have the marshalling down to a fine art.

Obviously not, my second event the 50 breaststroke comes around and I took my bag down to find a spot to leave it while I swum. Andy Gristwood kindly offered to play bag monitor for half an hour, as I made my way to the call area.

My heat was called by the adorable Andreas Prayer who always greets you with a smile. I made it through two rows of chairs and was sitting in the marshalling area in the corridor (didn't you used to dream of sitting in a corridor?) when one of the officials started to check our accreditation.

Uh oh no accreditation, I had very cunningly left it in my bag. I tried the usual Binge blagging technique to try and wangle my way out of this but it rapidly became apparent that "no accreditation no swim". So I had to dash out of marshalling and fight my way through the scrum of people waiting to get into marshalling smashing my toes on the foot of the railings, to locate my bag and my accreditation.

On returning my heat had made it to the back of the blocks so not long to compose myself and dive in. Swimming in lane 8 I couldn't really see anyone else but I knew speed merchant Hayley Bettinson would be in the mix on the other side of the pool. I finished second in my heat (to Hayley) and 9th overall. A big improvement on the Plymouth time but still pretty rubbish.

Now what do I expect after not training for about 3-4 months!