Poolside-Chat-parents-of-competitive-swimmers

[Glittertwins]

Hopefully this will work as we’re at 999 on the other!

@itsgettingweird thank you, do you happen to remember how much parking was in the Ponds Forge car park?

We parked at the NCP in Blonk Street, 5 mins walk from the pool and pretty secure.

I'm afraid I have no idea as it's free with a blue badge

I think it's more expensive at Ponds Forge than Q Park. You get a 50% reduction if you take your Q Park parking ticket to Ponds Forge reception.

I found people tended to come and go through the day.

You should be fine in the Q park and price benefits all depend on how long you stay. Ponds forge give you a £2 cafe voucher with each ticket so that’s handy for a shorter stay and if you’re likely to spend in the cafe. I park on the street and never have any issues but it’s really pot-luck

We got rejected today from one of our regional events 😭Too many swimmers for warmup. Madness. I’m happy to skip warmup 🤣
Sad for him and the others

@WidowTwonky yes some of DS's friends have got some rejections as well but luckily no one has lost all their races which would have been very disappointing for them.

I have pre booked Blonk Street NCP which I misspelled as Bonk Street which bought up some interesting results 🙈 I get very stressed about parking and dont want it to rub off on DS so thought this was for the best. DH can drop us at the door thengo to park, got to get in that hoodie queue nice and early 🤣

I'm laughing at the thought of your search results for Bonk St 😆
Our region doesn't look like they've cut anyone and also has the other half of the LC pool available for rolling warm ups and swim downs. The downside of that is that there is the potential to get soaked in both directions if I'm a turn judge! We've also got click and collect for our hoodies so have taken advantage of that as well so just need to queue for a hat that will probably never be used

Ours is half pool for continuous warm and cool down too.

I'm hoping that means a later start Saturday morning!

Unfortunately ds wasn't cut from any so he's in every session 🙄 did manage to get a weekend ticket though so at least I can watch him swim!

He's buzzing though as he just did a 26.5 for 50 free at training! He's hoping he can repeat that pb at the weekend 🤞

Hope his coach is a decent timekeeper!

🤣🤣

Me too!

How did he get on?

Good luck to all swimmers at regionals this weekend 🏊🏼‍♀️🏊🏼‍♂️

Winter Regionals rather passed me by. It was too late before I realised we hadn't any meets lined up until after the qualification window. Our club tends to focus on the Juniors aiming for County times or new to competing in September/October and "no faster than" QT's.

On the plus side, DD swam a few times for summer regionals last weekend so that's one thing ticked off the "to do" list. She was really chuffed because she's been struggling with race strategy/confidence for a while.

Good luck to all those competing, especially if you have a long drive in the pouring rain.

That's great she has some times and has found her confidence again. They train so hard it's difficult to watch when they doubt themselves - because they can clearly do it!

Good luck everyone at Regionals, we are lucky that we can stay with family instead of a hotel and have therfore packed the most important thing, fireworks and parkin.

We're not far from our pool but the motorway tomorrow night will be fun...not!
Quite happy we can go back to our own beds rather than a hotel this time

We are about half hour away from the pool but the motorway has roadworks and the weather so maybe a bit more!

But yes - we are also lucky we can return home to our beds! In fact we'll be home 4ish both days 😊

Same here, we'll be home by 4pm Sat and Sun. Just got the distance stuff tonight.

We’re lucky to live in Sheffield, so very easy door to door times. And we’ll manage the local bonfire on the sat evening 🔥

good luck to all 💪🏼

Tram is very handy for ponds forge!

Good luck to everyone.

Our region has had to scrap finals last minute due to a cock up with entries 🤦‍♀️

Doesn't affect ds as para is HDW but I know other swimmers who had a goal to make a final have had to adjust their expectations.
Coach has said Top 8 is aim for those swimmers but I know some aiming for top 8 for final and then improvement in final.

Still no draft programme either. Ds just wants to know if he has any AB swimmers in his freestyle heats so he has someone to race - he does swim better when there is a chase 🤣🤷‍♀️

Dog gone to stay with his friends.
DS1 taking the bus to Nanas house after school.
3 cats sorted with food/water for the weekend.
Gala food shopping done.
Swim bag packed and triple checked.
Just waiting for DS2 to finish school and we can hit the road, fingers crossed for no roadworks/accidents as we always seem to have the worst luck with motorways.

Hope you got there with no problem @Hellocatshome.
We did alright tonight, 20 second improvement on a converted LC time for 1500m. Don't have high expectations tomorrow since he got PBs in all the other events very recently. I'm sure he'll enjoy it anyway.

@Glittertwins thats fantastic well done mini Glitter. Well we managed the motorways fine got within half a mile of where we are staying and had to leave the car and walk the rest of the way as the only access road was blocked with a nasty crash but it wouldn't be us if something didn't happen on the gala road trip.

Well done mini Glitter (20s PB!!!)

Looking forward to this weekend's updates

Wow glitter that's fantastic.

Best of luck to everyone. We are here now and I'm sat MNing whilst he's gone through for warm up!

Here until about 3.30 and he's doing 2 races