A day at the beach

Busy day at the beach today (well ok yesterday cos I'm a bit behind on the blogging front) as the North East Masters Championships moved to the New Haven Pool.

We were honoured with the presence of our Masters Swimming Officer, so I had a night on the town to introduce her to the sights and the locals on Friday evening (well dinner and a wander along the quayside).

Anyway the new pool at South Shields is terrific (although I didn't read the car parking notice properly and ended up with a ticket! (It was £1.00 all day off season! doh!)

I had entered 7 events with an eye on my decathlon total; unfortunately this included my nemesis event the 200 medley.

I still have nightmares about swimming the 200m IM at Swansea in 2003 and turning from backstroke to backstroke much to the amusement of my team mates whose guffaws I could hear as I finished the length off breaststroke.

Well I provided yet another moment of entertainment as I executed my backstroke turn at the 75 metre mark; flipped over and missed the wall by about a metre! as I sculled back I was yet again accompanied by hoots of laughter from the gallery.

Which leaves me a long medley and a backstroke event to swim somewhere in the next 3 months. Botheration.

I have to admit that immediately I missed the wall the fight went out of me as I knew the officials wouldn't miss that!

It was the first time I've ever swum an event which awarded medals solely to the top three men and women on the basis of the age adjustment formula.

Of course the moral of this tale is that you should do a proper warm up and work out the position of the wall and what the ceiling's like etc, etc. Diving in and swimming the standard Binge 600 metre free warm up is totally inadequate for racing other strokes.


600 warm up
400 free 5:27.37
50 breast 42.
100 free 1:15.01
200 IM 3:16 (DQ)
200 Free 2:36.68
100 IM 1:30.14
50 fly 42.