My Easter weekend was spent coaching swimmers (including, to be fair, my own offspring) at the Taunton and Exeter Level 1 meet at Millfield pool. I do enjoy this sort of stuff, but as one nears the end of a couple of 7:30am to 6pm days in an environment designed to be comfortable for people wearing, well, not a whole lot, it does feel exceptionally draining.
For our club it was mostly a chance to get in a bit of practice at swimming in a long course (50m) pool and a last-ditch attempt to get qualification times for the Regional Championships. It looks as though we weren’t the only ones either. For me it’s about an hour drive, but it’s our nearest 50m pool so we have to live with it. There were other swimmers there from as far afield as Birmingham, London and even Edinburgh though.
Highlights of the meet included…
- One of our swimmers absolutely smashing his personal best times in a couple of events, with no prior indication that he would be even remotely close to the times he achieved
- My daughter achieving adding another regional qualifying time, giving her five events in total at her first regionals
- The MC, who made an excellent effort at trying to liven up the tedious job of announcing all the heats and swimmers names, often whilst wearing a pair of armless sunglasses. I assume he must be a Matrix fan
- A swimmer (from Street Swimming Club, I believe) who I’d guess was in his mid-teens turning up for the warm-up wearing a pair of trunks with a girl’s costume over the top, and carrying the entire thing off with some aplomb. I assume he either lost a bet, or was in the process of winning one
All in all it was a very well-run meet. I shouldn’t be in the least surprised if we’re back there next year.