Poolside chat - new year, new racing!

[Glittertwins]

Hope this works, am rubbish at this!

That's our Regionals done and dusted (and hoodie colour/sizing sorted)!

This was probably our last ever swim competition (It is rare for DD to train for more than a couple hours/week).

The weather is absolutely wonderful down here in Devon (so glad another swim parent recommended staying out in the countryside over a Premier Inn in town a couple of years ago).

Good luck to everybody still waiting to compete.

Well done to your DD.

We are at High Wycombe for our regionals.

Ds wanted to come and be with his team mates despite racing quite a bit recently.

Not sure it bodes well when he only did a 50m free and said "it shouldn't hurt as much as it did". He's still got 100 and 400 to do 🙈😂😂

50m hurts mine more than a 400m so hopefully nothing to worry about!

Our regionals went well as yesterday was last day for us.

Unfortunately he has a condition which has got worse so he has been told he cant swim for quite a while - 6 months! He is pretty down about it but health first.

Oh no. That's tough. I guess the small lining is being able to go back fairly on into a new season which hopefully means he can complete the next one fully.

We had regionals this weekend. Ds swam as expected (not well 😂) but it was still good iyswim?

Now back at training for a hard block before summer competitions.

🤞 for those hoping for national times. DS has made the consideration standard for paras - just need to see if he's invited.

Mixed weekend for us but there's no chance of putting down decent training for a month until exams are over now.

Well done to all those who had regionals.The pool DS trains at was used for open regionals so he did his first open water of the year instead. It was probably a bit too early parenting fail on my part.

I don't think it's early. Ours started 3 weeks ago 😂

We seem to have a quite a large cohort in gcse year this year but only 1 doing a levels.

Last year we had a large a level group and odd few gcse.

The east are all pretty evenly split through year groups.

Good luck to your ds and anyone else doing exams this year.

We had another great weekend at regionals with younger DS following up on his success in the first weekend with more medals and some big PBs, I don’t know where it came from!

@Spendonsend sorry to hear about your DS, that’s tough, I hope things improve for him with the rest

Sea or lake? I think the sea where I am might be colder than where you are. He is quite a hardy open water swimmer but was absolutely frozen. Despite his coach having his open water qualifications DS has to do all his open water training independently as the coach and club are just not interested. Which makes it harder because I have to rely on my own judgement.

We stayed in the country one April when our Age Groups were moved to Sunderland - we got snowed in!

Fortunately the farmer next door ploughed the lane to the main road for us (thankfully it wasn’t a morning swim).

And well done to mini @itsgettingweird - fingers crossed for a call up!

Hello - its lake. Man made lake we get use of. Ds doesn't do open water - he's definitely a pool only swimmer 😂

Not sure of temp but they are in wetsuits.

Hi all,

My dd12 loves her swimming and trains and works very hard. I feel so bad for her though as yesterday she was swimming in the 13-14 category, but she's not 13 until end of December. She's getting so disheartened and we had lots of tears yesterday. She's very hard on herself- despite me and her coaches reassurances that she is a great swimmer. Made worse that her bf (2 weeks younger) swims in the 12 category and came out with medals (though dd made the same times) and qualified for nationals. dd had a 14 second pb on a 400m freestyle (which is amazing!) but she's just always coming up short for qualifying time for nationals (by 2-3 seconds) because she's got an age disadvantage. Im trying to get her to not dwell on the age thing because there's nothing we can do about it.

Anybody else in the same situation that can give advice on how to deal with the disappointment though?

Not exactly the same but my son is a para swimmer. He had to race against non paras for years until he had classification. So no counties and above. No medals or finals etc. moving up squads later than everyone else.

We just focussed on his personal gains. His improvements. You can't change the age system for swimming anymore than you can for schooling.

Swim England though have recognised the need to support younger age swimmers in the year and select specifically for programmes based on this.

Remind your DD that everyone races in an open age group at some point and everyone's bodies grow at different rates and if her times good in her age on day eventually it'll even out.

My ds went to his first counties at age 17 and his first British the same year based purely on the fact he was classified.

Individual achievements and progress goals can be the only focus or they'll burn out and lose love.
One of the reasons my ds is still in and absolutely loving the sport at 19 is he didnt peak too soon and then feel like he could never get back there.

Unfortunately all you can do is keep reinforcing to her medals and nationals etc aren't the be all or end all. Only she can take that onboard and act on it but if she can it'll serve her well.

Thank you @itsgettingweird
We have had a chat and we've talked about taking a long term view because she's so young and still has lots of growing to do. I try and reinforce how great it is that she's still making progress and to not worry about anybody else and that's she's only swimming against herself. Her coaches are great and did put out a message to parents to say that some of the best swims of the day didn't get medals so swimmers shouldn't be discouraged.

A year under age at the best of times is hard but it does all equal out eventually

I agree it all evens out. My son is also a para swimmer, albeit he was classified when he was 12. But after the first couple of races understood he was never going to “win”, and in fact is only just at a stage where he might beat a child 6 years younger than him, and still won’t get to nationals as such. He’s 14, so given he needs to grow won’t beat a nearly 18 year old even in his own class. His disability also gets worse as he grows until he’s got used to his body again. I wanted him to swim just for his health, but he wants to compete, so we decided to sit down with his coach and work out which goals he should work to, and what was realistic, and what was pushing it. He is now very much concentrating on improvements which he can understand and will see where it gets him. That works for him as he knows that any system has winners and losers but he can only control himself (and even that varies).

Yes para swimming has pros and cons to always being open age (and multi class).

Swimmers learn to accept from a very young age you can't beat older swimmers and also it doesn't matter how well you swim as a big part of your placing depends on how fast the top time has been in the world in your classification. And when people are moved up a class their record stands.

But I think para swimmers are just generally more resilient anyway because they face so many barriers to just swimming before the other crap swimmers have to contend with!

Then you get other shit like all AB swimmers getting medals engraved with event on at competitions and para swimmers just getting a plain one.

One day equality will stop just being a word.

Most able-bodied swimmers aim for improvement also. It’s all you have any control over - you can’t control how fast others are. You can only control your training, your start, your race.

It’s a tough sport and there’s always someone faster. The clock doesn’t lie.

I think this thread has some very very fast swimmers on it, most don’t win many medals other than at very low level galas. Some have literally never won one. Dd2 has only ever medalled at club galas, she won’t even do that this year 😂

Dd1 does have one engraved one. Bizarrely enough it was for 100 breaststroke and BS is her worst stroke.

Yeah but AB swimmers swim in age groups. At 12 all swimmers are 11/12 yo.

11/12 yo para swimmers are racing 18+ yos. Then add the multi class.

They aren't comparing their times at 12 against other 12yos (there's very rarely 2 paras of same age and class racing - unless S14) I think for them that's a pro because you aren't going in expecting to win at 12 (or looking at what others your age are swimming!) and so you can only focus on you and time. It's probably the one advantage they have and makes it easier to just focus on their development.

This years regionals all medals for ABs were engraved with event. All para medals weren't. They also don't count them in medal table.

They feel unnoticed and not really equal

I’m not saying it’s fair or equal, just that most swimmers are concentrating on their own improvement not medals. Most also don’t get to regionals anyway and about 30% make counties. It’s easy to forget that on this thread which has a very large number of incredibly fast successful swimmers.

Nothing can possibly be fair when you’ve been dealt hands like para swimmers have - and of course they should be treated equally.