| ASA Masters Long Course Championships – 18-20 June – Glasgow |
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Report by Anne Raymond The ASA Masters Long Course Championships were held last weekend over 3 days at the Tollcross Swimming Pool in Glasgow. Note the amazing split times! After an early pick up to take me to Heathrow on Friday morning, I arrived at Glasgow Airport to see many familiar faces. On the bus from the airport to central Glasgow, one of the ladies said that it was a nice pool and mentioned that 5 years ago she had PB’d all her events here. I was silently hoping for a similar fate. As I have been swimming poorly at practice for the past 5 weeks, I had a lot of apprehension leading up to this meet. My first event was the 100m breaststroke on Friday night. I swam it well, PBing by over 2 sec, which is a lot for a 100m event. Thankfully, this swim also settled most of the pre-event nerves. At least if everything else I swam went disappointingly, I had had one good swim. Saturday was always going to be a long day, as I was swimming both the first and last event, plus a third individual race in the middle of the day and a relay (although I don’t train with them, Croydon Amphibians have adopted me and I am a second claim member, which allows me to swim relays, etc, for them). The 8am warm-up session felt very sluggish (I am not a morning person!). First up was the 200m freestyle. I comfortably won my heat in another PB by over 2 sec, despite being down by the usual body length at the 100m point. I now had a long rest before the 200m breaststroke in the afternoon session. Despite this being my strongest event, it is the one I get most nervous about and it is definitely the most painful…always! The sense of relief when I finish it is huge, and in this case it was made even better by a massive 6 sec PB. At this point I decided I rather liked the Tollcross Pool!! Then off to the cool down pool to be back in time to see Nick Gillingham (multi-Olympic medal winner)swim his 200m breaststroke. It was absolutely beautiful to watch. At 43 years of age “the old master showed the youngsters how it is done” to quote the commentator! My next event was a 100m freestyle as part of Croydon Amphibians ladies 200-239 age 4 x100 Medley relay. As I was last off, and at that point our placing was decided, I did not have to do a flat out swim. This allowed me to conserve some energy for my final event of the day, the 800m freestyle in the evening. I kept telling myself it was up and back 8 times! I started rather hard (still in 100m & 200m mode, I expect!) and was rather concerned when I was in the lead at 50m, which I never am at this point of a race. At 100m I had a comfortable lead and the remaining 700m was very lonely. I was a bit worried ,as I’m used to having someone to reel in or at least pace me. I must have done something right, though, as I managed another large PB and swum the second 400 faster than the first (a negative split) for the first time ever in a race. |