Poolside-Chat-parents-of-competitive-swimmers

[Glittertwins]

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

Sounds a sensible plan @Hellocatshome, hope he's ok.
DS is quite enjoying middle distance and 1500m free these days so he's concentrating on that then the odd 50m event here and there which generally does him as a good warm up race before his favoured ones.

Ours have to get times during a certain timeframe.

So for regional winters it can be times got for summer meets or at summer meets.

For our counties they need to be swam during cycle 1 usually so they do need to get new times even if the times they have are good enough.

I think this is so that swimmers who have a good time in the past but can't hit that time currently (injury/illness etc) don't fill the spaces above swimmers who are currently performing better.

Oh that sounds strict itsgettingwierd. We’re under NER and it’s just times achieved since sept 2020

I'm going to check ours again as I may be wrong! 🤦🏼‍♀️🤣

We have our first gala weekend in September and coach does the entries - 12 events per swimmer across all strokes. I think it's a bit like a start of season benchmark and to get ranking times for events they don't normally swim.

Might see your DD at our club meet in October @Porseb. They were there at the last one in summer

Which meet is the one in October?

Sent that by PM as sending my club name will totally out me!!!

That does sound strict @itsgettingweird, our counties they can use times from this January up to mid December, not sure on regionals but thought they normally went back a similar amount too.

Gearing up for various open meets and club champs starting here. Thankfully both my two already have one county time so that takes a bit of pressure off the autumn, but my nearly 14 year old has had a rubbish year with endless knee issues and I’m desperately hope he can improve some times as he’s struggled to improve any of them in nearly a year.

Just replied! :)

It's ok. I think I'm talking rubbish 🤦‍♀️🤣

Just checked back to conditions for 2020 champs as that was the last time it was standard entry iyswim as they changed conditions for meet after covid.

It says times could be from March 2019.

So yes they can already have times when they enter cycle 1 that qualify them.

I think the issue in our county is the size and it's highly unlikely (unless you're outstanding and way above general level of your age group) that times you've acheived that early would be enough by December when the closing date arrives. It is likely times achieved at summer meets for those who qualified for them would be because that performance isn't likely to be exceeded in cycle 1 iyswim?

Have no idea why I thought it had it be achieved during cycle 1 period? I think maybe cause they hold first chance and last chance qualifying meets (that's what they call them) in the county and I've just put 2 and 2 together and incorrectly made 5 🫣🤦‍♀️

Our last Counties had a "from whenever" QT as many swimmers were scrapping around to find ANY licensed meet.

This year's times and conditions will probably emerge in the next month or two. Normally it is based on times from 1Jan to early December.

The times are usually quite generous for goodish swimmers - we usually tick them off at the previous year's Counties.

Ours are from April 2022- Dec 2022 sometime now that we've had a reasonable number of licenced meet. This year's was 2019-2021 times due to the lack of meets.

Dd old club always had a "last chance" gala as close to Christmas as they could. Took me quite a while to figure out why it was called that!
Ireland has a US style competition system apparently, short course to the end of the year, and LC afterwards. Take the pressure off on the approach to Christmas anyway!

The Irish meet calendar is very similar to British.

Short course (September to December), long course Jan - July

National short course meet in Dec, selection trials / championships in April, summer champs (Div 1 & 2) in July

How's everything going now the season has started again?

We are still on the build up so just 4 sessions and a land training session this week.

He's very happy though as has been invited on a SE programme.

All good here. Last Open Water event in the morning. Training back up to full speed. First gala and Junior League Final next weekend (Queens funeral dependent)

Training nearly back up to full schedule as mornings start next week.

We're almost back to normal, whatever that means. DD is really unfit!

We've a couple of local Open Meets for swimmers next weekend. I am keeping my fingers crossed that they don't get cancelled.

Our two had a pre season swim camp so got a rather rude awakening into training!!

Ds is really unfit too 🤣

They have a medley club champs on Friday. Will be interesting to see his times (50m of each stroke).

Long course middle distance set for tomorrows training. Let's see how quickly he falls asleep in the car on the way home!

Is your pool quite a distance away?

I'd be interested how far and how long people travel for.

Our pool is about 10 miles and 15 minutes drive (20 in traffic) and mostly motorway.

But I still always stay down there or I'd be doing 80 miles some days and 360 a week just for training!

DS won his last Open Water event before hanging up his wetsuit for winter. It wasn't actually a race but it was blatantly a race as far as the kids were concerned 🤣

We live half a mile from our 50m home pool so we are very lucky.

Nearest LC pool is 15 miles away, normal training pools 13 miles away. We usually get home quicker than we get there due to less traffic. He's been known to snooze in the car within 2 miles of setting off going to training though.