Another month has whizzed by - what did you get up to in October, I’d love to hear about your adventures & challenges.

You’d think that now the end of the Dover training season has been reached that I’d have lots of free time. I look forward to this time of year when I get a chance to catch my breath again. Well, I may just have to wait a bit for that as I continue to juggle all sorts of things all at the same time.

Swimming

There are some open water swimmers who only enjoy open water swimming and find the swimming pool oppressive and boring. I’m not one of those. I love pool swimming. I love my masters team and I enjoy honing my technique.

I enjoy the fun and camaraderie of competing and, unfortunately, I don’t get to compete as much as I used to as I spend all my summer weekends running training in Dover. Now that Dover training is done I had the opportunity to compete twice this month:

1. South East Regional Masters at Guildford Spectrum

2. National Masters Championships at Ponds Forge, Sheffield

South East Regional Masters

My events for this weekend were:

• 50, 100 & 200 freestyle

• 50 & 100 butterfly

• 50 & 100 backstroke

Some real ‘novelty’ events in there for me. It felt great to be back in the pool and competing. I don’t have a childhood of club swimming to fall back on. As a result I haven’t spent years working on speed and technique. Furthermore, I have chosen to focus my performance on ultra marathon distances, so I’m not likely to be a challenge to other competitors in my age group.

50m Freestyle

There’s nothing quite getting in and needing to find some speed in the first event! Sprinting really isn’t my forte, so I was pleased by the fact that it was almost a second faster than the same race in the Surrey’s in June.

Time = 44.58

100m Backstroke

I am through and through a front crawl swimmer. I stopped doing anything other than front crawl for 5 years from 2013 to focus on completely changing my front crawl and because an injury would flare up when I did backstroke. I started doing backstroke again at the end of last year. Whilst the injury no longer flares up, I’m still not a backstroker!! Still, that said, the times I do are consistent with ones from 2008, so that can’t be all bad!!

Time = 2:00.58 + silver

50m Butterfly

There was a time when I considered butterfly to be my second stroke. Whilst I actually enjoy doing it, I need a lot of work on my technique (and speed)!

Time = 55.56

100m Freestyle

There really isn’t time to think on an event this short. I’m used to being able to really think about my technique and am aware that it falls apart a bit when I try to apply speed. Still, my time was marginally faster than the Surrey’s in June.

Time = 1:34.62 and not last!

100m Butterfly

It’s about this point in the gala that all the events start to take their toll only to then have three events in rapid succession. 100 fly straight into 200m freestyle was interesting to say the least.

There was only one heat of butterfly. The other person in my age group decided not to swim. I was also aware that the fastest people was so fast that I might actually get lapped. In the end I don’t think I did. I did, however, have to take it pretty easy to ensure that I could not only finish the event but have a little left for the 200m freestyle that would follow just after.

Less than 3 seconds slower than the last time I swam this in 2012 - I’ll take that!

Time = 2:04.34 & gold!

200m Freestyle

Straight after 100m butterfly - what was I thinking! I can’t say it was my best race, but I finished and I’ll take that!

Time = 3:22.82 & bronze!

50m Backstroke

I thought of this as a bit of a warm-down after the 100 fly and 200 free. That said, when the beep went, I still raced. The last time I raced this event was 2008 and imagine my surprise at being one second inside that time!

Time = 58.95 & silver

Overall, it was a fun day. I met up with old friends and had some good races. It was great to be back in the pool and I remembered why I love to do this!

National Masters Championships

Two galas in one month - busy, busy!

The two were very different, though. The South East masters had a maximum race distance of 200m and took place over an afternoon and evening. The National Masters takes place over three days and has the full Olympic Programme. Anyone who is an Amateur Swimming Association (ASA) member can enter the South East Masters, whereas you need to meet qualifying times to swim in the Nationals. Other than that though, you see familiar faces and the team spirit and camaraderie is great at both.

If you want to read my reflections on the nationals, read more here. Suffice it to say, I had a great time and did some times that I was very happy with.

Performance Coach

Dover Channel Training

So, having said that Dover training finished in September, there is one thing that we do in October that I really look forward to and that is a day trip to France to visit the various landing sites that swimmers land at. For some this is the first time that they go back to where they finished their solo or relay. It can be an emotional time or one of deep reflection. Some others come before they have done their swim to get a feel for what the French coast looks like.

The weather was wet, very wet and it was windy, but that didn’t dampen the spirits.

We visited Sangatte, Wissant, Cap Blanc Nez and Cap Gris Nez. We also enjoyed a lovely lunch at La Sirene, over looking Cap gris Nez. After lunch we had hoped to have a swim in Wimereux, but it was so windy we couldn’t. We took another look at Wissant and that was also unsafe. We eventually opted for Sangatte and enjoyed a lovely dip.

A lovely day.

This really did mark the end of the season though and I put together the photo montage below to reflect on the highlights of what has been a fantastic season with wonderful swimmers.

Individual Clients

I’ve had some wonderful one to one hypnosis and coaching clients this month. Highlights include:

• Using hypnosis to help someone get back on track with their rehabilitation after surgery, fear and mindset issues were holding her back. Both understandable and even logical, neither were helping her.

• Working with a new client wanting to prepare for a channel solo next year with a focus on mindset preparation

• Working with a new client on career coaching

Corporate Life

This month I had the opportunity to visit the AstraZeneca Warsaw offices for a workshop. I had a short presentation to do to update the team on our vision and roadmap. I wanted to do more though and challenge how much we all make assumptions about all sorts of things. Find out more on a future blog. Unfortunately I didn't have the opportunity to see anything of the city, I’ll need to visit again one day.

I’ve also been pretty busy working on my area of a large programme in which we’re in the strategy creation phase. It’s a completely new area for me which is something I enjoy, it’s a challenge and expands the mind.

Family Life

Georgia, Josh, Paul & I had an impromptu visit to Lakeside and decided to play a bit of crazy golf. Crazy golf is such good fun. It’s the first time I’ve been on a course that is tech enabled and auto calculates your score, with big bonus points available. That certainly kept things interesting and meant that it was all still to play for until the last hole and whilst I did well on that last hole, it was too little, too late. Hey ho, maybe next time!

Back at home and the renovations continue. I now have new windows, a new front door with a smart lock and a fabulous new set of bi-folding doors at the back of the house. Next step is making good with plastering before working through the rest of the list - there is a great deal still to be done!