Poolside Chat - parents of competitive swimmers continued

[Glittertwins]

Getting a bit close to the end of the previous one!

DS swam at a uni pool in a comp last weekend and said it tasted salty 😂

Can't imagine his reaction in a lane. Sea or that pool in Iceland

@Madcats thank you, I should probably have said that our counties are SC (I keep forgetting that lots aren’t!). But still a hard event to swim. It’s really hard to know the right balance, DS and I both agree on a few events that aren’t worth him swimming where at best he might just scrape the final, but that one day is really difficult when they are all good events for him that he’d ideally like to swim.

@Hellocatshome that’s a really brave event to do! It sounds like my eldest’s worse nightmare, he hates being cold so any kind of OW swimming has no appeal to him!

Ooh, I think I've swum in that pool in Iceland (was that Laugardalslaug pool?). TBF I think I spent more time in the hot tubs, but it was April!

Some of our masters are into sea swimming. A group of them did the island to island race in the Isles of Scilly a while back (Scilly Swim Challenge). At least the sea around the Isle of Wight is a bit warmer!

The Solent is also quite protected because of the IOW so a bit calmer too!

Our counties are also LC and run over 3 weekends over 6 weeks. Ds isn't doing it this year as has the world para series British leg in Aberdeen in the middle of the youth weekends.

I'm happy to hear all these positives about the Solent, warmer and calmer sounds great 👍

Our counties is LC over 2 weekend starts right at the beginning of Feb and still haven't got any qualifying times released.

It was! It was an interesting experience and would take a lot of adjustment to train in properly being so used to UK pools. I managed 12 lengths before giving up and testing out the steam room and variety of hot tubs. It felt like the other end of the pool was never going to arrive!

I feel like the pool is never ending on a normal 50m pool!

@itsgettingweird The Aberdeen pool is a nice facility - whereabouts are you staying?

@Hellocatshome that seems very late, and doesn’t help them with knowing what events to enter at meets. We’re nearly at the cut off date for times for ours!

Nowhere yet!

I'm not going as term time. He's going with my dad and a coach!

How is everyone?

We are at a meet all weekend. It's getting cold here too. We even had snow on the way home this morning.

I'm very aware being south coast I'm sure it's worse for all of you

Snow??? Nothing here although we are considerably more inland than you. No meets this weekend 🥳🥳

Ds just swam his first distance event in 4 years. 800m free and totally smashed it!!! Missed the county auto time for his age group (AB time) by 1 second 😂😂🤷‍♀️

@itsgettingweird thats fantastic. I love an 800m, a distance swim without the long long wit for it to be over.

The amazing thing is that although it doesn't count he actually went quicker than the current British record for 800m free

We did have the long long wait for it to start!!! 4 1500 heats and 4 800m bedsore his!

Well done!!

I’m buying the Xmas gift for our coach this year. Looking for some inspiration!
I don’t know how much we’ll get contributed yet, so let’s assume that money is no barrier- what are your squads buying?? The only thing I know is a no-no is alcohol. And coach is female

I think we've done JL vouchers, beer, house stuff before now. Beer obviously out of the question for you

Thanks @Glittertwins, yes I think I will probably end up getting vouchers as I’m really struggling to think of anything

How about a coffee machine and pods for the poolside office if they have one? I know coaches appreciate a hot coffee for morning training. Might even be able to get some thermos type lidded cups for them to keep poolside too.

I like the hot drink line of thoughts.
It’s tough isn’t it….shes a fairly young coach (no dependants) but still has bills to pay etc. so I was torn between useful or treats.
I’ve gone for a voucher so she can decide

Well Somerset Counties are up in the air; Millfield's pool room flooded a couple of weeks ago and they are now hoping to reopen at the end of January (by which time we would normally have had 2 weekends of Counties).

Goodness knows what the school are going to do with all their school swimmers and the Performance(Olympic) swimmers they lured there from Loughborough and Bath etc.

Oh no. That doesn't sound good.

Good luck to all competing at Winter Nationals.

We have pulled out but I'll be following online!

That sounds a long time to be out of action for. Hope it gets sorted quickly