January 2006 - Your Roving Reporter

I am a big fan of Ivor Skrewkyk and Tom Bullturn. Ivor and Tom are upstanding members of the Barnet Copthall Masters Swim Club who sometimes can be found sitting down in North London UK. A few years ago NT had the pleasure of Ivor (or was it Tom?) visiting us for a Saturday morning practice and the constitutional breakfast at Yitz’s afterwards, we shared our secret power food “knish”. He was duly impressed and hasn’t returned since.

However our own Erin - a couple of years ago - looked Ivor up while visiting Jolly Old - and while navigating through the bizarre names of the London Underground - finally ended up doing a reciprocal swim at the Barnet Copthall Swim club in North London. So you could say we are sister Master swim clubs (http://www.eyepi.co.uk/oldmasters/specials/sisters.htm ). Ivor and Tom ran a very humourous / satirical masters swimming Blog linked to the Barnet Copthall Swim Club but as of late they had a wee tiff with the “knowing powers” at the Britain Swimming administration and they have had to disassociate themselves from the Swim Club. The details of which are quite funny in themselves, but as Ivor writes on http://www.colinbrownknows.com - the fellow in question just “knows” the website is wrong. Ivor and Tom unperturbed have now started up a “free” independent site called the Wobbly Block – Actually I think of the website every time I get up on the lane 6 block at North Toronto to do our walk backs and lane 1 block (deep end) at Etobicoke (Note: Due to my pathetic age/speed I never get to swim in lane 4 or 5). I encourage you to bookmark the site for the 1^st thing you read each morning http://www.wobblyblock.com/ above your Toronto Sun bookmark.

Another slightly more serious swim site is www.Swimnews.com. Craig Lord who writes for swimnews is another with dry wit - he also has the most colourful descriptions of the soon to be banned plastic shiny, slippery, slimy, slick, silly swimsuits. There are plenty of other blogs/websites as well; the US based http://www.swimnetwork.com/ has lots of glitz and glamour and also some interesting stuff.

Hey, going back to morning routines. Don’t you feel all refreshed and gung ho in the morning after a thumping good workout in the pool? I’m sure you do - so you will certainly want to make note of the meters you swam won’t you? Just click on Master Swimming Canada’s Million Meter Challenge: http://mymsc.ca/Million.jsp

· We certainly can’t have the likes of The Cornwall Sea Lion Masters logging more klicks than us

I spent last week on the very sunny island of Cuba at an all inclusive. The sun was hot and all the people have a sunny disposition. All my siblings plus various wives and kids (13 of us) were down to celebrate my Mum’s 80^th. This is something I highly recommend for a family get together ... no quibbling about who has to cook, do the dishes and who pays for what. Many little irritants that can trigger conflict between family members are completely removed. Everything is laid out – it’s all right there. The really big decisions are reduced to what to drink next and the most difficult decision is to figure out what day we should visit Havana. Another tip: the more people the merrier - diluting strong personalities and having distractions (the kids) and plenty of rum are key to a successful family get together. My Mum had a brilliant time – she can’t stop talking about it.

OK so what does my family vacation got to do with an article about swimming? Well it turns out the resort I picked happened to have a “sports” pool - well someone has to pick! The pool looked like 25m in the brochure (turns out it was 20m - but at least it was square). My daughters swim coach had supplied us with honking great workouts for the week (6-7000m). So we were set. So I thought. My 15 year old daughter had significant influence from her 15 and 21 year old female cousins - who do not swim - but enjoy the nightlife, booze and all things boys. Getting my daughter out of bed for a workout in the morning was a traumatic experience - funny she hops out of bed in Toronto at 4:50 AM to make it to practice - but in Cuba at 8:00 AM it was close to an air raid siren wail. Anyway after the first few mornings we got into a routine and things sort of settled down – a bit.

I must say swimming at resorts is a most pleasant experience…it’s kinda like Summerville without all the “do’s and don’ts” signs (there must be at least 12 “No Diving” signs all around Summerville Pool) and lifeguards telling you to take a shower, swim a width before you are banded and allowed in the deep end etc. It really is most refreshing. In fact the only signs in the whole resort were really important signs like what activity was on for that particular day, washrooms and exits. Most civilized.

Anyway back to swimming in the tropics; our Coach Doug is Head Buckaroo of the 3^rd Annual Masters Swim Camp at Laguna Mar Resort on Margarita Island, Venezuala for the first week of January 2010. All you need is a pair of dark / smoky goggles (I mentioned the sun is hot and also very bright), 7 days vacation and about $1300 and you’re set!

You’re not mucking about in a resort pool that is a half kidney ovalish shaped octagon with palm tree stuck in the middle – this resort has a full on Olympic 50m pool. Oh yah. Serious swimming. And because there will be a bunch of swimmers from across Canada and an open bar: there will be Serious - and I mean Serious - Partying. So far there are 26 signed up and like I said earlier; swimmers are like family, the more the merrier with these things – dilution and distractions (well not so much kids – but how about some bikinis for both guys and girls …. giddy up). The deadline is this Monday, October 26, for the guaranteed rate – so sign up soon!

So this is it. I am finally putting fingertips to keyboard since last May and this time it’s going to work. I’ve tried over the summer ...oh my goodness I’ve tried, but the piece always ended up in a screaming polemic rant and my blood pressure at 200 over whatever – and I ended up wiping it all out and then start performing deep breathing exercises. I certainly don’t want to dwell on the garbage strike of 09 – but for the love – at the end of the day it never needed to happen. So frustrating. Anyway for me it was a summer of Havergal (nice) and groveling to swim Saturdays at any pool anywhere. I even e-mailed the Head of Parks and Rec asking to see if we could use Summerville. I used - I thought - was a pretty good logical argument: “it’s my pool – I paid for it and I want to use it” to which I got a rather ‘we are government and we know what’s good for you response’ - “we can’t let you use it because we don’t want you subjected to picket lines”. If that wasn’t waving a red flag in my face…anyway I must stop thinking about it – I get too wound up.

OK I swam everywhere it seemed: Bowmanville, Cornwall – I also swam in some dingy old pool called “The Granite Club” (btw thanks Gord / Katie)! Still I managed to slip about 6 positions on the old Million Meter Challenge: http://mymsc.ca/Million.jsp because of the strike…grr

Take the Garbage out of summer and I thought this summer was super – I am one of those cool people – can’t take the heat. When I couldn’t swim I could do the next best thing - run - and the temperatures where perfect for it…there is nothing like running in the cool or rain - quite invigorating. All you triathletes full on into racing season must be loving the temperate climate.

So back to Summerville – we have one more workout on Wednesday - I can’t believe how fast the summer has gone. Looking forward to the season ahead, NT continues to expand - coach Doug tells me NT is into another pool in the east end - Riverdale Collegiate (located at Jones and Gerrard: http://maps.google.ca/maps?hl=en&source=hp&q=riverdale+collegiate+institute&ie=UTF8&t=h&z=16&iwloc=A Tues and Thurs).

Perhaps we could call the new location ET; The Extraterritorial or perhaps Entertainment Tonight with Coach Zuzana “Mary Hart” Samkova. Anyway it’s a great addition…start times for all locations and groupings will be posted soon. Stay tuned.

On the competition side of things, our coach Doug did us all proud by winning a slew of medals at the largest international games apart from the Summer Olympics – no it’s not the UN – it’s the World Police and Firefighters Games (http://www.2009wpfg.ca/index.php) – this year held in Vancouver. This is quite the games: everything from Angling, Darts, Horseshoes, Gaelic Football to Decathlon and Lawn Bowls and something called TCA, Toughest Competitor Alive (Yikes - what if you lose!). Actually it’s stuff real people do! Our Doug picked up 8 medals…all for, um… swimming.

In October, we have 2 swimmers going to the Worlds Masters Games in Sydney Australia – Kathy and Wes. Kathy has been madly swimming up a storm all summer getting into shape. They are both going to crash at Christina’s place in Sydney (an NT alumni living in OZ) Good luck guys!

Just so you know, Omni Swim has their annual big one day sale - 25% off everything!: Sept 12^th. So pop on out and purchase that racing suit you’ve always wanted. Be a daredevil and purchase that Jaked or Blueseventy you’ve been eyeing – they are all legal in Masters swimming – for now. Actually when they are banned in that “non masters category” on January 1^st 2010, the manufacturers may stop making them – who knows? So better get ‘em soon.

I’ve never swam in a Nationals meet before…certainly never made it while I was in age group and CI’s were out of my league. Masters is great; just join a Masters Swim Group – MSO ~$35/year go online and sign up for the meet. Bingo, lickety split, just like that one can compete at the National Championships level – impressive eh! My daughter who swims age group, is green with envy that master swimmers never have standards to meet and to add more shade of green we even get to pick our own events.

So NT is at Nationals - 49 of us strong - erm well not quite that strong …some bowed out because of the sniffles (Michael, Lesley), another bumped her hand on some door (Kathy), and a few moved to far away exotic places like Australia, China and The Granite Club. Impressively others soldiered on, one of our newest members - Victoria – a real trooper - had a temperature of 400. Derek with a ‘rolled’ ankle the size and colour of a pomegranate staggered up and did his usual thing with aplomb. We also had a few surprise team members show up for us; Andrew A came out of some sort of 4 year self imposed excommunication (caused by 3 small daughters perhaps?) to add us some points and Cecil R a landlubber for 30 odd years and sire of a litter of ridiculously fast swimmers made an impressive splash for us. Also it was super to have Micaela v R come all the way from Frankfurt to swim for us.

Close to 1000 swimmers competed from all ages 18-100 attired in all sorts of legal swim wear (thankfully the Borat suit was safely tucked away in a swim bag). Just as well really because a day after the meet – Our Funny FINA apparently DQ’d some popular suits: the B70 & the Italian baked Jaked suit. I say apparently because in FINA’s seemingly clear cut ruling (!) they just left those suits ‘off’ the approved suits list - so by conjecture and nuance we assume they are banned (?). Be that as it may the records still stand as we all know that nudge nudge wink wink – nobody was exactly sure what suits Doug, Micaela and Wes were wearing when they broke their Canadian records

On to the swimming. As mentioned our Coach Doug (50) - swam a super meet and ended up with 3 Canadian records (200, 100, 50 Breast) and his 50 breast time 31.81 was just 0.7 shy of the world record! Also Micaela (56) broke a Canadian record in the 50 free 30.1 (shh don’t tell her German friends!). Wes – our on again / off again NT member broke his own world record for the 200 back and 4 other Canadian records.

Going through the results I noted many 1s 2s and 3s beside many of our swimmers names – shuper duper… I’d like to also point out those swimmers had never been to a swim meet before; e.g.Marlene, came to swim just a 50 free to get her feet wet. The many Triathletes who always have so many excuses when swimming in a Triathlon: “oooh my wetsuit doesn’t have the right racing stripe”, “ I saw Nemo and got scared”, “I got lost in a kelp farm”, “My transmission was slow” – this is some odd thing that happens after they swim. Well no excuses now, only dives and turns…We can safely say that NT has made our Triathletes into swimmers and they’re definitely ready to graduate into a proper multisport event, the swimming pentathlon.

At the Social on Saturday night, Masters Swimming Canada recognized Doug for his coaching by awarding him the Excellence in Coaching Award – the first time it has ever been presented. It was very fitting that he was awarded it by another excellent coach, Nancy Black of the Aurora Ducks. The Roving Reporter would like to thank all those who contributed to Doug receiving this well deserved award.

Nationals also had a couple of special guests; one from Hawaii – Karlyn Pipes-Nielson, who holds a gazzilion world records and really showed us some fast swimming…nearly all of her times were Canadian or world records walloping men and women alike. Another awe inspiring swimmer was Jaring Timmerman from Manitoba…knocking off world record after world record at the spritely age of 100: http://www.thestar.com/article/635584.

All in all it was a super meet. So next up: the Nationals in Nanaimo Bars BC yum yum. Also Provincials will be in London – that would be the Ontario one - next March so happy racing and training…

OK lets get this out of the way right away: Baumann is not Phelps. Baumann is a lot slower and definitely looks and swims as though he still belongs in the ’80. Sporting a Simon Le Bon (lead singer of Duran Duran) haircut complete with highlights and an old washed out Hawaiian shirt (His swim team Tech’s theme) he would fit right in an episode of Magnum PI. His swimming style is also eighties – nice flat smooth looking breast stroke – none of this bouncy bouncy, splashy grimacy stuff all the whipper snippers do nowadays. Other evidence that Baumann is not Phelps: he did not wear one of those new fangled Speedo LZR suits… he swam his World Record 200 IM on Friday night in a plain old Speedo. It was also noted that there was a significant dearth of bongs on deck.

So the weekend started off with a bang – Someone remarked to me that we were like the Griswalds in movie Vacation. Everything went wrong with the hotel – you name it. We couldn’t get into our hotel rooms until after the session on Friday (they weren’t cleaned until 5). I hit the bang bar with my car roof luggage carrier going into the parking lot, then when leaving the lot… the parking pass did not work - twice – this always happened with a string of cars behind me - natch. Coming back to the room after a long day of swimming on Saturday – the electronic door locks would not work for over an hour… (but at least we got a good head start on drinking in the hallway though). The cleaners obviously could not get into clean our rooms and it was already 5:00 PM. The elevators were inadequate and slow and of course it didn’t help that the hotel was crammed with adolescent Ringette players and their frightfully polite (!) parents. Stepping back now it - I was hilarious – at the time erm not so much.

The up side was that we all had a super fun time. Friday night: Lasagne party with very nice salads and we all sat around deconstructing the swims we had and pontificating on pretty well anything else. We then had a quick snack of cold delicious lasagne from the night before. The Ducks on Saturday night hosted a ‘do’ at some gargantuan sports bar in the middle of nowhere - for some more lasagne. Then things were really starting to hum: I was in full coach mode extolling the virtues of drinking pints of Gin and Tonics. Erik and Peter being a quick study cottoned on right away. Erin was almost there but switched to Red Wine – not a good move as it turned out – as later on she spilled some on her “front”. Wes was on fire solving the world’s economic crisis. TYMS was plotting some dastardly plan to beat us or something. Then NT quickly made an exit and some landed up downtown at some small night club, others went back to the hotel for a gabfest. The nightclub scene was as one would expect from our club…it got fun and messy fast - enough said.

Oh yes I forgot we went for a swim meet as well. We had a very fast contingent from Havergal consisting of Heather, Stephanie, Haelie and Maria. They were persuaded to join the Saturday crew…this was met with blank looks (Saturday morning? what is that?).

I can best sum up our collective swimming up as “up and down”. We all seemed to have good and bad swims. Bill “The Chiz” Chisolm managed to beat Alex Baumann in the 200 breast – how can that be? - you ask … Bill was swimming fly. Sabrina - a newby - swam a gruelling first meet: she swam a whole 50 and then get this, a 100 – yup 4 lengths in a row – without stopping. Wait there’s more; she rose to the occasion again and swam 2 more lengths in a very important 4x50 relay. This relay was against a former and current (?) NT swimmer Katie (she inexplicably swims for Granite for now) and the race was delicious in the outcome; NT took the lead early on, then lost the lead, Sabrina in 3^rd zoomed liked a synchro swimmer coming up for air and gained a huge lead and then yours truly almost lost it to a big gun of the Granite club. Fortunately the gun ran out of pool and we won by a touch. Sweet. But we do sorely miss our Katie in a Swim or Die cap.

Friday night - Lianne swam a very fast 1500 and is probably now top 10 in the world, at length 44 she said she was kaput – but hung on for a speedy 19.19. Our Havergal team rocked and blew the competition away with a 2:02 in the 4x50 relay. Zuzanna half way through the meet was all depressed and was carping on about giving up swimming, being burnt out and all that malarkey. She then beat the lady in the commercial (MJ) in the 50 fly by 3 100ths and all is perfect with the world – loves to race/swim etc - typical sprinter. Another new swimmer Teah had a blast competing in the 4x100 free relay for a rather piqued - from the night before – Erin. Erin couldn’t swim as her hangover induced sun glasses would have likely fallen off. But she did manage the 200 back and performed very well considering the alcohol content of her sweat was making her super fast(?).

For this reporter it was a full on eighties weekend not only watching my new nemesis Alex Baumann (in my age group) but the car I was in had XM radio fixed on the 80’s station and MJ, Amy, Allison, Erin and I sang very loudly & very badly cheesy Toto, Bon Jovi and Belinda Carlisle tunes.

Many special thanks to Kathy for all the accommodation / travel arrangements: she really is an organisational queen - thinking of everyone all the time - making sure everyone is accommodated and having a good time. Also big thanks to Bill for the use of his Gaussian synaptic neuron interfeeder spreadsheet pulling all our relays togetherm We ended up being 5^th over all – most probably due to the wild and sneaky combos he came up with! Also thanks to Erin for the social side of things keeping us on our best behaviour, ahem!

Well here we are – well into 2009. I was going to write a “Happy New Year” Article only just yesterday and wish everyone a happy new “age up” birthday and oops I looked at my calendar and we are almost into February. Time flies. It really is whizzing by with all these wonderfully fast (no rest) free style aerobic sets we are popping through this month. I think it has to do with coach Doug’s time away over Christmas and New Years at various swim camps he attended in the southern climes.

Coach Doug was mentioning to me that the Masters Swim Ontario Camp held on Margarita Island in Venezuela (organized by Claus – TYMS) was as usual - a blast …lots of swimming, – twice per day, sun and other fun activity. 2 Nters made it this year, Suzy and a newby Alban participated, they came back with deep tans especially their backs as Coach Doug had them face down in a pool for hours every day! It has been heard that Coach Doug thinks that it would be a great idea to hold an North Toronto Training Camp there next year...... could you imagine.....

All this training is good stuff as we are heading into the spring competition season. This year’s Provincials are being held in Nepean on March 20 – 22. We have a good wodge of people (20, that would be by my calculations um..er 5 relay teams – oof that was a slog) already committed and we are hoping more will hop on the band wagon. Just e-mail Kathy, Erin or myself. Kathy has some very luxurious suites booked downtown Ottawa (woot) with plenty of space for more swimmers. Cost will be a bargain at around $50/night - assuming you are sharing.

Not into road trips? Then there are plenty more pools to strut your stuff in, the Milton Spring Splash March 8^th and our friends at Downtown Swim Club are hosting a thing called an All Out Swim in April – lovely Loooong Course at UofT where I suppose you are going to swim “All Out” and it’s only a one day meet. Of course the Grand Daddy/Mummy of them all; Nations are hosted this year in Etobicoke on the May long weekend – check them all out here: http://www.mastersswimmingontario.ca/competition/schedule01.htm

Well we (the breakfast crowd) have found an alternative for our Saturday Morning ritual (for some the only reason to come to practice and the others who skip practice and just do breakfast). “Boom” opened up right next to the pool, a place that specializes in all things breakfast. Of course we would never abandon Yitz’s with it’s fabulous service and superb waitress Gabriela; however the need for a little peameal, crepes, freshly squeezed juices and smoothies now and then is certainly appealing. So hang out after practice, feel the collective mood and follow the crowd … heading east or west.

Hey there North Toronto. I hope this finds you well. Apologies for the mass email to those who have no idea who i am--ignore me--and to those I missed with good-byes before heading off. Life got a little hectic in the final few days.

We've been in Melbourne for 6 months now and have been loving every minute. I'd been meaning to fire off a "Swim or Die" missive but have been busy. Had a crazy North-Toronto small-world moment on Christmas Eve when I bumped into Christina on an evening sea kayak paddle on the Freycinet Peninsula in Tasmania. This may top the list of all the random places in the world to bump into someone with whom you've shared a lane.

First things first: Doug, you better get your ass down here. 90% of the women walking by our apartment could tan you into the ground....the ones that haven't tanned themselves out of the visible spectrum are a healthy orange. You'd love it. I boil off half of my blood volume just walking to the video store. Plus you could pull 20 people off of the street and 19 of them could recite relay splits to the hundredth of a second from the last 16 Olympics. PS, please save a spot for next year.

As for me, the work at the Royal Children's is pretty amazing. We see some wild stuff. Currently our most challenging problem is separating Siamese twins conjoined at the Head. Pretty "heady"* everyday stuff really :) Kids as patient--the remaining non-conjoined ones--are fantastic and it makes clinic a lot of fun....unless one arrives just after having put their hand through a juicer; but that's far and few between, and that's why there's a Hand-Guy.

My favourite work day is Thursday. Romy and I both have clinical downtime in the morning and are ?researching? the difference between point breaks and beach breaks along the Victoria coastline. Surfing Rocks. Standing up is easy. But for us, the euphoria that accompanies this precludes turning, carving or doing anything much beyond. I look quite unfortunate in my black and fluorescent yellow wetsuit straight out of the '80's, purchased on ebay for 17 dollars. A one centimetre coating of 1000+ SPF gives me the air of a post-apocolyptic mime which doesn't help things. Romy pulls off the beach look far more gracefully then I do. Aside from paddling my board into waves just prior to getting munched, i haven't swam once (absolutely disgraceful*). For those die-hards there are 6 outdoor 50 m pools plus a really big ocean within about 10 minutes of our place(WT..*). We've got into road biking since coming here....Australians are obsessed with it. You should see my new gear. Very european. We were told our MEC riding gear "looked like shit." We did a 250 km road ride in the fall, which was pretty much the most uncomfortable thing i've ever done in my life.

With every spare minute we travel Australia fanatically. We continue to meet our goal of spending every cent we earn here. Actually we've exceeded it. Our vacations have been exotic. We chartered our own sailboat in the Whitsundays, sailed it ourselves and slipped past dolphins and sea turtles to empty mile-long white sand beaches. We spent our first warm Christmas in Tasmania. On Christmas Eve we sea-kayaked, rose early the next morning, hiked to the top of a mountain and returned in time for an oceanside dinner of champagne, fresh oysters, and lobster pulled straight from the bay.

Soooo, that's life in a nutshell down under. Pretty run-on email. Hope you're all well. Keep in Touch. Its about 35 and sunny. I'm watching the australian open on TV and have tickets for tonight, watch for me in the crowd. I bet its colder at home (Too friggin right it is - mate - ugh*). I've thrown in a few vacation pics from the adventure including our former swim-or-die, lane mate and I on Christmas Eve. Look us up if anyone plans on passing through. We've got an extra bedroom.

Doug

Interesting Times

(pin-yin:shi shi zao ying xiong) – May you live in interesting times. What a silly proverb. It’s always interesting. If it’s not the downturn in the economy then it’s not being able to swim in the dark but having to make ‘do’ and swim in a swanky new pool with tons of people, big fat lanes ropes and “having” to shower with members of the opposite/same sex. How about Suzy’s new “Nemo” swim cap complete with fins? Do you remember Erin making breakfast far more exciting by covertly bringing much sort after sausage to Yitz’s. Of course there’s Janey’s new “thing” with Almond Butter and how about Lane 4’s propensity to do weird things to pace times during IM sets. Of course let’s not forget Gord’s aversion to turning right at the wall instead of left (is this a Tri thing?) actually that’s not very interesting.

Speaking of lane 1 swimmers, take our Sarah for instance; she just completed the Iron Man in Florida last month in an amazing time of 10 hours ‘n change, interesting because Sarah is a swimmer. She almost bested her PB Marathon and of course that’s after the swim and spin bits. She said quote “mmm I felt fine, I could have pushed the bike a little harder I suppose”. Feeling “fine” in an Iron Man? That’s actually a little beyond interesting.

There was an interesting thing on 60 Minutes last night; I saw Anderson Cooper (or is it Cooper Anderson – why does he have 2 last names? Mmm is that interesting?) do a piece on Michael Phelps. It looks like there is some money in swimming after all - on the show he apparently turned down a $5M endorsement. Phelps sleeps a lot and we were told the much ballyhooed 12,000 calorie diet is not true – he actually only eats 8,000 calories – yup hold that wafer thin mint. The segment ended with a 25m race between Phelps and Cooper. Cooper from a dive going balls to the wall looking a lot like our Katie but not nearly as fast and Phelps swam from a push and did underwater dolphin kick. Phelps thrashed Cooper. In the amazing world of TV, Anderson was not breathing hard at all at the end of the race, (must have edited out all that interesting medical intervention) as Anderson calmly admitted defeat and shook Michael’s hand.

There are interesting times ahead as well; a bunch of us swimmers are going Curling at the Granite Club, December 12, for NT’s 1st Holiday Curling night. I was told on the way to breakfast that since curling is played on frozen water it is akin to swimming. You know, technique being of paramount importance; balance, core strength and all that guff. To be honest I wasn’t in the mood to argue – I was still trying to recover from the IM set. But really, when did you last go swimming with a broom? Do you swim with one hand ‘slipping’? Have you ever seen a curler in a LZR or a speedo? Hmmm now there’s a picture…perhaps the Granite Club curlers need to see some swimmers in their racing get up firing off rocks and cleaning the ice? Now that’s hot (figuratively) or cool (literally) but definitely interesting. And oh, by the way - we already have a super turnout, it sure will be interesting and FUN so if you’re still on the fence – come on out!

Upcoming Swim Meet

A month or so into it and we are up against the first swim meet on Nov 16th. Etobicoke is hosting the Semi-serious IV. Which just about sums up Masters swimming in general don’t you think? we are all basically Semi serious IV. If you were Semi serious I, then maybe you’d be too serious – semi serious III still means you get a medal. So it is the perfect meet to start the year with. Actually my first meet as a Master swimmer was Semi serious I and it was a great way to ease back into it. I swam 4 events and then we got to do relays such as 4.5X swim backwards with a kickboard up your nose. It was lots of fun – no really!

Million Meter Challenge

Swim Nerd Alert!

Noticed a lot of furrowed brows last night at practice when Bill received his 500,000m swim cap and pin. There is a rather interesting Masters Swimming Canada (MSC) website dedicated to keeping track of your meters, best times at meets and it even has a sop for Triathletes and all you Arnold Schwarzenegger’s out there – you’re able to track cycling, running and weights. As a bonus it even has a notes section so you can track your diet, vital signs, feelings towards numb nuts in lane 2 - whatever: http://mymsc.ca/index.jsp Here are some fascinating facts from the website:

· Coach Doug has swum 3,641 km – that’s almost to Europe, Iceland at least I think. It took him 3 years.

· Someone called hosspro swam 200m in the whole of October (all freestyle). Imagine.

· Etobicoke is winning the race in club meters – they have waterproof laptops on deck.

· You can move to Australia, swim for Australian Masters and keep adding meters for NT... thanks Christina

· The Gold Caps (are lovely silicone) and pins are shiny and sparkly and are really really nice

· The Roving Reporter has not received his Million meter gold cap and pin that he was supposed to get in January. hint.

So please sign up - NT really needs the Meters, Heck even the Cornwall Sea Lions are ahead of us this month.

Investment & Swimming?

I was thinking today about my small and fast diminishing RRSP and what other things you can spend your hard earned cash on. I thought of Swimming and tried to see if it was a good investment. So here is the value proposition: Pay up front, no monthly payments and you get an ROI or that other fancy MBA term EVA that is not based on anything more tangible than a feeling of being rather chuffed after practice, the ability to drink a few more pints and have that extra bag of pork rinds - guilt free. In addition there is that sexy chlorine smell the opposite (and in some cases the same) sex just goes nuts for. You are the life of the party when you start talking in weird swim code: typewriter, descending sets, reverse IMs, ladders, echelons etc. Is there a downside? Yes. You may live longer - meaning that you’ll probably still need more dough in your RRSPs anyway. In this market it’s probably best to swim against the tide, you’ll end up further up stream when the tide comes back in – I apologise, that was a truly pretty pathetic analogy – best listen to very long distance Swimmer Warren Buffet and his ilk – buy the fear, sell the chlorine or whatever.

The Phelps Effect II

Wow. Holy Moly. Gosh. My word, there are lots of people out for the first few workouts. We are all trying to be Phelps, even Tri-athletes(!). It is age group all over again. 8 to a lane, lots of splashing and noise and close calls at the wall, chitter chatter, lots of yelling coaches marching all over the place.

It is super to see so many new faces. Apparently the mayhem will continue this week due to some burnt out light bulbs at NT – apparently someone has ruled that the pool’s luminosity is dangerously low and allowing swimmers / lifeguards with miner helmets complete with waterproof 24 volt halogen head lights was a little impractical.

But Hey - we’re OK with Mayhem, right. That’s why we joined this club in the first place. The rec swim routine is rather a lonely and frustrating endeavour. First you have to get a pool sorted (you do mental contortions trying to differentiate between Adult Swim, Lane Swim, Family Swim & Rec Swim) …then when you get there you pick the ‘fast’ lane – you know, the lane with the rather large lone swimmer doing a sort of side stroke in a Frilly flowery get up with matching bathing cap. Said frilly swimmer then looks rather cross as you pop in the pool and start doing your warmup. By the time you’ve finished your warmup (which you have not really thought about, maybe it’s a 200 300 or 400 - You don’t know as there is NO coach). You’ve lapped our - not so friendly swimmer - 5 times. You are then standing there wondering what to do next (no coach remember) mmm… 8x 50 on 1:00 you think.. ok where’s the clock – no clock. OK get out of pool get your wristwatch. Set it up. Already to go and guess who has just pushed off the wall in front off you. Our Frilly flowery swimmer is not easy to overtake as he (?) / she is like a slow moving iceberg: 10% is above the surface and the other 90% spreads out for miles (well most of the width of the lane anyway) below the surface.

Half way through the 50’s along comes Frilly’s friends and they decide to have a small conference about this ‘fast’ swimmer invading their lane. This conference invariably happens at the end you are turning. It’s hilarious (?) and it happens ALL the time, you are swimming up to the wall ready to give a good ‘kick’ / turn into someone’s lower solar plexus then when seeing you approaching the wall they decide quickly to launch into their ‘iceberg’ speed side stroke…ugh.

We’ve all been there so we know the drill. We’ve grinned and bared it trying to think how wonderful it is for Frilly to be getting out with friends and have a little (very little) exercise.

So it’s really a choice: swim with Frilly or swim in Mayhem. I’ll take Mayhem right now but in the back of my mind at some point in my life, you never know, I may be looking for a matching bathing cap for my sagging speedo!

The Phelps Effect

Well it has been a long time since I tapped out a report!

We have another summer and an Olympics behind us …onto the fall we go. It will be interesting if there is a Phelps Effect (or Ephect?). Interest in swimming will increase; the Phelps diet is certainly a draw….gosh the famous breakfast: “3 Sandwiches of fried eggs, lettuce, tomato, cheese, fried onions, and mayo. One omelette, a bowl of grits, 3 slices of French toast with powdered sugar, and wash that down with 3 chocolate chip pancakes”. The journalists went wild for this one. Columnists from The Globe and The Daily Telegraph went on the diet and only managed to get through about half of it. It helps to do the 6-10K practice before hand. Basically he eats, swims, eats, swims, sleeps, repeat.

Did you notice the re-current theme throughout Swimming at the Olympics was coaching Age Group 101. The stuff 10 year olds are taught. Coach Doug was all over it. That poor bloke Cavic swanning / gliding in (sigh…) for his final stroke of the 100m fly, dum dee dum la la la for what he thought was a gold medal finish, ready to turn lackadaisically around and do the slow motion victory pumping of the air with his fists. Did you catch that silly sod from France – you know the world record holder Bernard - swimming Wes style next to the lane rope allowing an American 32 year old geezer to slip by him in the last 10m to take the win in final leg of the 4X100m Free. Coach Doug had a great time walking around the deck and putting his hand out like a police officer and saying "Stop I don't want that gold medal - I'll take the silver instead" in reference to Katie Hoff's finish in the 400 free. Or, how about all that breathing off the turn stuff? As the underwater camera showed a turn at some freestyle event Byron MacDonald was about to excitedly (does he ever say anything unexcitedly?) say “look at the swimmers all taking 4-6 dolphin kicks off the wall”, then he had to say somewhat less excitedly but still quite excited “ mmm that’s funny they should be taking 4-6 kicks off the wall” as a few of them came up for air. Having said all that - there was one person who obviously listened to his age group coach and did everything he was supposed to and he’s the only one with 8 heavy metal souvenirs.

Moving on

We will sadly miss a couple of NTers this season. Sarah J has moved back home to the wet coast via Beijing to watch her brother get some humbling or rather team strengthening Olympic waterpolo experience. Sarah is embarking on a career in manipulations and subluxations. We will all miss her smile and free chiro advice. Another Chris, in fact Chris G or 2C has decided for some bizarre reason that moving next to EOMAC: Travel distance to workouts trumps an NT practice, famous innuendo breakfasts, mondo parties and of course world class 2^nd to none coaching. Just proves, the world works in mysterious (?) ways. Good luck both Sarah and Chris.

Bring on the 2008 -2009

So NT starts the new season on the 16^th at Havergal – hopefully the Phelps Ephect is still alive and we have lots of eager beavers out ready to swim like well trained 10 year olds. What with most of us crazies all gung ho for another year of fun - Coach Doug is fielding phone calls for new recruits …so it should be a super year.

MSO Provincials 2008

A Yuk Yukking Good time

Well there went the weekend there was. Whatever that means. Anyway we had the entire team show up this year thanks to our little registration sign off commitment thingy. My, we had some super swimming and it resulted in a 3^rd place large team overall finish for North Toronto…yup that means we are the Number 1 club in all of the GTA (of course we all know that Aurora is not part of the GTA)… As Coach Doug was heard saying "Let London and Aurora duke it out, North Toronto is Switzerland - it's about quality not quantity"

Travelers

As a team we demonstrated no end of commitment and dedication; This years winner: Juan flying in early Sunday AM from Columbia (not the University - the Country) getting up on the blocks for a very fast first 100 of the 200..... then a very bad case of jet lag set in.... to Bill our almost francophone NT Swimmer flying in from the Saguenay to 4C traveling 5 blocks from his home in Etobicoke (and No - he quite rightly does not want to switch his allegiance to EOMAC).

No fouling!

There seemed to be a nasty bug going around and we had many swimmers not feeling up to par with a few complaining of yukky tummies and flu. Sarah B was feeling yukky on top of a rib injury, still she managed to get through the decidedly yukky 200 fly with no problems (at least from the spectator point of view!). Janet and Nicole were also feeling a little on the yuk side but managed to swim well and keep the pool free of debris.

Records Galore!

All the records this weekend came from our super fast relay teams:

4 Canadian Records: 4X200 free relay for 200+ (mixed – Michael B, Arthur, Sue, Katie), 160+ (men – Derek, Chris S, Chris T, Bobbo) and 120+ (women – Sarah B, Zuzana, Kathy H, Sandra). 4X100 Medley 100+ (women – Nicole, MJ, Jennifer B, Allison)

2 Ontario records: 4X200 free relay for 200+ (men – John S, Michael B, Wes, Coach Doug) and 100+ (men – Eric, Peter Bo, Peter Bl, Jonathon)

…and last but not least our World record for 4X200 free relay mixed (Queasy Janet, MJ, Trevor, Jason) which lasted about 10 minutes before pesky EOMAC clobbered our record by over 10 seconds grrr.

One inspiring note on our relay records; Michael B was instrumental in 2 of the above records after swimming events back to back – going beyond the call, wouldn’t you say?

Swim meet? Naa let’s do a workout!

I can’t list all of the individual medals as it would just go on and on and on (you can see the results for that) but we did have some notable swims: Kathy H managed to “race” a complete workout over the course of the weekend; let’s see here…she warmed up with the 200 free relay (Ontario Record) on a 2:31 pace then she immediately swam a 15X100 Main set on approx 1:20, 100 back sprint on 1:22, another sprint 50 free in the relay on 33 (missed that one by 0.8 tsk tsk ) followed by an aerobic 1X400 free set (working on streamlining) on 5:10. Another quick 50m free relay working on the turn followed by an easy warm down late Sunday afternoon when everyone else had gone home of a 800 free on 10:31. Total of 3100m. Not bad - and she came away with a fistful of medals and points for NT.

Newbies

Our new members did remarkably well: Paul, Haelie, Carrie, Matt, Amy, Jennifer, Peter B, Ryan, Adam, Dave, Juan, Anthony swam swimmingly swell (gotta like that alliteration eh?!)! It was fun watching the new ‘NTers’ – many not having swam at a Master’s meet before and Danica who had never swam at a meet before - ever. One has to wonder why one gets up super early on a beautiful weekend Spring morning, sit in stands all day long and put one’s self up on the blocks once in a while and show all just how fast / slow, great / useless one really is. Apparently this is fun for over 700 people who voluntarily attended. Judging by the smiles and laughs on our new NT faces - for sure it was fun! It was only my 3^rd Provincials and they seem to get better each year!

Yuk Yuks

Apart from swimming we had many a good yak sessions around the pool deck with our competitors and fellow team mates. After the 400 free on Saturday we all bundled up to the Airport Marriott for more Socializing at the Yuk Yuk social event hosted by the Aurora Ducks and EOMAC at the Marriott. NT represented ourselves well with 2 tables and settled in for a super time up to approximately 10:05 PM. We had a lovely meal with a good healthy nutty salad and one of those rather tasty chicken breast thingies that has a bizarre bone that sort of sticks out randomly, it has the perfect amount of skin, seasoning and not a spot of dark meat (good for the white meet lover I suppose?!) it was delicious. I still try to picture these fast twitch chickens sprinting around (hence the white meat) with short stubby bones poking out of their chests? Weird. Anyway this was followed by a delicious I.M. killing cheese cake – I.M. killing, as it totally was to blame for my horrendous 200 IM the next morning. I’m sure this was a secret weapon inflicted by the Ducks to immobilize the competition with delicious rich cheesecake. The Yuk Yuks troupe then came on to entertain us and all went swimmingly well with some good old fashioned swim jokes etc. until as I mentioned 10:05. The final comic very soon had us all feeling rather uncomfortable and hence madly squirming in our seats – the only good thing I can say is that we all had a 25 minute buttock workout. Still on the whole, a fun evening…

Sunday surprise

The meet was winding down when some NT swimmer decided to try out a new swim suit recently used in the most successful swimming movie since … ummm - was there ever a successful swimming movie? Anyway the swimming movie I am refereeing to is Borat. This particular individual wore the infamous Borat Mankini (once again - in case you missed it the first time) - and managed to “shave” seconds off his PB. Amazingly, as was abundantly apparent - there was absolutely no shaving involved. Unfortunately this unshaven PB, although not close to any records, caught one particular official quite off guard. He deemed the swim wear inappropriately too fast and after the race immediately disqualified the team. However Coach Doug came to the latest Kazakhstani technological innovation’s defense and managed to reverse the ruling.

So all in all, the 2008 MSO Championships were a huge success for NT and Coach Doug is contemplating all kinds of interesting scenarios for next year…as word is out that Provincials may be in Ottawa (Nepean) and Nationals in Etobicoke. Stay tuned!

February 21, 2008

So you’re all pondering The Ontario Provincial Masters Swimming Championships at the Etobicoke Olympium March 28-30 – the deadline is coming up (March 7^th). Everyone is asking themselves improbable questions; such as sprinters - Shall I try that 1500? Triathletes - that 200 IM looks promising…distance swimmers wondering if they can really go under 30 seconds for a 50 free. Go for it …it will be a super duper meet. All of NT is going to be there – a first! Coach Doug must be salivating at the multitude and combinations of relay teams. Don’t forget to e-mail Coach Doug your entries…

NT will definitely be a force to be reckoned this year with 80+ swimmers, watch out EOMAC, London, ROW (you all know who I mean!) and our favs The Aurora Ducks.

Don’t forget to sign up for the Saturday night Yuk Yuk social; a bunch of swimmers + bar + a dance floor = watch out. Sign up soon, space is apparently limited.

For any of you wanting to test out this whole racing thing check out Milton's Masters Annual Spring Splash on March 2^nd. It is a great little meet to blow the cobwebs off and get into race condition.

Swim Fast

January 18, 2008

Lane Rage

You’ve all done it. Drafting, tailgating and swimming right up the dingus of the person in front of you. Generally being a Clingon. It’s kinda nice sometimes when the person in front swims slower than you …you can sort of pootle along – work on your stroke a bit, not worry about tediously counting lengths, it gives you time to think about all sorts of inanities, such as ‘that pretty swim suit Loretta is wearing over in lane 4’ or pontificating obscure sullied thoughts. Then all of a sudden the swimmer in front gets to the wall and turns - well - right in front of you and then careens to centre of the lane. Calamity - Because you’ve already started to move to the centre of the lane to turn – luckily the person is streamlining under water - so you try and avoid hitting their legs as you turn. But the poor sod behind you is in for a head on collision with the person in front of you - Yikes.

Or how about this one; just finishing up that 8th 200 fly when someone’s hand gets in the way of your recovery and “whack” you’ve dislocated that poor person’s thumb. Or more to the point just mention the name Keith and watch out…6’5” tall and arms nearly as long. His age group coach obviously was into straight arm recovery... a wide birth is required when swimming with our Keith.

This is also a good one: You’re swimming the last of many 400s, you’ve negative split every 50 and - Wow - this is IT, you’re pouring it all on, using all the gas left in the tank on the last 2 lengths. You have a couple behind you all in step with you and you’re all just flying. Just as you are about to turn - DANG - 2 other lane mates decide to start a social kick set. Right. In. Front. Of. You. Arrrgh. Chuck everything out the window… chalk one up to unfinished business - again.

Which brings me to Road cycling. Road cycling is similar to swimming in that cyclists tend to cycle very closely to each other in packs or pelotons and draft off one another. However this is where the similarities end. Quite simply many (not all) road cyclists are boneheads – snobbish and rude. How do I know? Because I am one. I have ridden 13 Rideau Lakes Cycles Tours (Ottawa to Kingston and back). Many cyclists are gear head snobs…sneering at any bike that’s older than 2 years old and not sporting the latest Durace or Campy kit - I fall into the trap as I take pleasure in out peddling the latest titanium $8K machine on my 15 year old Columbus steel job spec’d with ancient 8 speed Ultegra. Along with this snootiness, many of these peloton packs can be filled with rage, you get the Leaders and Clingons of the pack angrily barking orders; “Passing”, “Car Back” or making jam jar opening gestures at the road - somehow this indicates that a pot hole is coming up. My favourite is some anal twit gesturing for me to move over 2 inches to ‘stay in line’. Ah but it’s all in the name of Safety you say. But I say, have some fun with it - we aren’t the Tour de France - laugh a bit – we can be safe and have fun. Ask any triathlon type about road cyclists and you’ll get the same answer… knuckleheads the lot of them – you don’t believe me? Go on the donut run.

Which brings us back to the pool. For swimmers, our medium is liquid – there is no nasty potholed tarmac, arrogant cyclist or fancy equipment – actually we don’t really need swim suits…we just use them to cover our bits up. Swimmers are notoriously nice, congenial people. Most of us go with the flow as it were. The only hazards are the wall, lane ropes and our lane mates. But sometimes crap happens. I guess what I’m trying to get at here - without being too preachy - is the use of etiquette - we all enjoy swimming and we swim very closely together. Etiquette is all about thinking about the other swimmer, letting the faster swimmer go ahead of you, giving people room to turn, avoiding collisions; if someone is buggering up - speak to them exactly how you would like to be spoken to yourself. If you whack someone regardless who’s at fault – apologize. If you’re bent out of shape because of something - suck it up, smile, make a joke, have a laugh and give them a hug!

Let’s leave the rage on the road.

December 18, 2007

“Happy Birthday Everyone” - Jan 1, 2008

The Masters Swim calendar is interesting. Typically in North America we start the season in the Fall and “build” up to the Spring of the following year when we ‘peak’ for our provincials and national meets in March and May. However in the UK, our North London sister club have wrapped up their season and are heading for hibernation as all good beavers do. They have just celebrated their yearend party http://www.upthebeavers.com after swimming the British Masters Championships at the end of October. The Beavers will start their new swimming year I would say logically in …um January.

On Dec 31 at the stroke of midnight, we Masters of the Swimmers world collectively ‘age up’. In North America we go through this odd mid-swim season year identity crisis. Which means in essence one is pootling along in October through December attending various meets as a happy say; 40-44 year old, wiping out (or in my case being wiped out) by those young pups in one’s age group, then all of a sudden WHAM January 1^st - half way through the season - one is now 45 and one meets up with those more experienced, seasoned and faster swimmers (Hello Coach Doug!).

I like the UK model. The calendar year ends and so does the swim season. One starts up the new season with a fresh ‘new age’ along with everyone else. I’m sure there is some logic behind the North America model – but it alludes me.

Be that as it may, we all must age up sometime and many of us have ‘special swim friends’ (SSFs) that come and go in our age groups. We ‘keep a close eye’ on them throughout the competition year checking their whereabouts and meet results, especially when they are close to or are consistently faster than we are. I’ve heard many SSF stories from people and they are typically told with a grudging envious admiration.

When we attend swim meets, sometimes we wish our ‘SSF’ to be there (hopefully to pip them at the wall) and sometimes not - or hope they entered a different event - sometimes one ‘feels the need’ for a medal. I have a few SSFs and many come and go each year. Unfortunately one of my SSFs was born the same year as I, so there’s no getting away from him. He loves to compete; therefore he is at e.v.e.r.y. bloody swim meet. He is so spectacularly fast in every event I compete in – and what is even worse is that it’s not just in swimming he excels, he happens to be a huge NT chick magnet as well. The women of NT literally go gaga over him. And the real kicker…he is just a really is a nice guy. My only hope to assuage my feelings of total and utter inadequacy is that he joins NT - as they say keep your enemy close.

With our ‘aging up’ rules as they are - I kinda like our Zuzanna’s situation whose birthday is on Dec 30^th. She is perpetually premature on her Masters Birthday by 364 days – she’s also lucky to be forever younger than most of her competitors (born in her year – and for her it seems to be a perpetually 29 years ago). For us January born geezers - ‘grr’ – we’re not so lucky.

So really, no matter when one ages up or when one starts a swim season – it all comes down to the famous Masters swimming saying …if you can’t beat ‘em – just out live ‘em.

And on that happy note! I’d like to wish everyone the most excellent compliments of the season. Remember to load up on all you can over the next 2 weeks or so because you’ll need all that extra fuel to swim fast in January.

Oh yes and a BIG HUGE Happy Birthday to you all January 1^st. I think we will have to arrange a big birthday party for us all in January don’t you think?

November 7, 2007

That Lovin' Feelin'

So, we love swimming. However, do you ever get that feeling sometimes that really, you are not worthy of being called a swimmer? That it’s all just a waste of time and why keep doing something that you know won’t amount to much and if it does it wouldn’t stand for diddly at the end of the day. I got that feeling last night.

There I was in lane 3 of 3 lanes doing something Coach Liz called a California Cruise: 5 sets of a 300 ‘cruise’ followed by a 100 on a 5 second faster pace (fast) then 100 easy… I was in a lane with Coach Jen, Carrie and Big Mike. Lane 2 was full of hot speedsters and in lane 1 - the usual mish mash of speedboats. We get started and Jen zooms off “leading the lane”. I was hopelessly trying to keep up; my tank totally drained on the first go around. For the remaining 4 sets, it just got worse. The piece of paper said 3-5 sets. Jen says that she planned to do 4. Carrie, in between gasps declared that we should do all 5 – oh great - a newbie keener! On we swam - I felt like Jack Sparrow (after a few jigs of rum) hanging onto rigging without any sort of fancy Hollywood safety apparatus below me. But hey, I was trying it all; stretching the stroke, finishing the stroke, streamlining, breathing every 3(I could manage that maybe once), swimming downhill, sideways, inverted and inside out - nothing worked, my arms still felt like fat pathetic whirling sausages. Lane 2 people were cruising by me, everyone finishing each set and looking like they had just finished reading a Jane Austin novel – you could see that sort of contemplative, self satisfied inner peace thing going on – yup Darcy finally ends up with Catherine… aaah yes all is right with the world. Meanwhile over in lane 3, Carrie and I are on fire, fire engine red that is and our lungs are starting to detach. I was in that semi prone gasping position blankly staring at the water - like someone who had just survived a Jerry Bruckheimer chase scene, you know the one with the bridge blowing up after the F16/Corvette chase scene.

At the supposedly “oh so sweet” end of the 2500m set, Jen announced languidly that for the last set she in fact felt a little piquéd – and could only manage the 300 on 4:10. I could not believe it. It was a pretty innocuous thing to say and Jen is a super swimmer but my pointy brain snapped, I thought to myself – “What’s the point of it all?” - I let go of the rigging. I went all sullen and sulked off to help with the lane ropes …and managed to screw that up as well.

We all have good and bad swims and for that matter runs, bikes etc. Last night for me was – as Borat would say at a Southern Baptist dinner party - “not so good”.

I am an Average Joe Master swimmer; any prospect of breaking records is infinitesimally small (Doug won’t allow me to use the word ‘can’t’!). I never made Provincials or CIs. I am your guy with a gazillion ribbons mostly 5^th and 6^th and a couple of bronzes for events such as 100 IM which is especially made up for Masters and the under 10s.

I got thinking during the drive home last night trying not to listen to some old coot of a professor on CBC radio spouting on about Messy Lectures … and I suppose to get to the amazingly simple pointedly point of it all - that since we love to swim, means we have to swim through it all - good and bad. If you don’t go through the bad you’ll never know what the good feels like? Sounds like any relationships doesn’t it – simple eh! Swimming to get that Lovin’ Feelin’!

October 17, 2007

Swimming into a new Season

Almost a month into our new regime: A new location has resulted in a plethora of new and returning NT swimmers eagerly wandering around Eglinton, Avenue Road and Lawrence neighbourhoods most nights of the week armed with wet swim suits and towels. NT is obviously starting to take over North Toronto. In the not too distant future I foresee Coach Doug will be looking to other areas to annex, invade and conquer. Unstoppable expansionism will grip NT. Pretty soon there will only be one club competing at Provincials… that of the one and only North Toronto a club of at least 1000 swimmers from every corner of Ontario; Cornwall to Thunder Bay and Pelee Island to James Bay! Read this maniacally => HA HA HA HA HA

Thunk.

Oops that’s me falling off my high horse…Ouch.

Anyway, back on the ground here, what was looking to be a rather uncertain future for the club in August with the Monday closure issues etc. in the end turned out to be a promising and exciting opportunity. The Monday closure issue was resolved and Coach Doug simultaneously made the bold move to expand the club and make use of the HCS pool - much to the delight of many. Coach Doug with his gaggle of coaches; our new coach (Judy), returning coaches (Caitlin, Jen and Liz) and a returning coach from sabbatical (Janet) are sure to add fizz, pop and bang to our workouts, resulting in super fast swimming.

It’s great to see so many new and familiar faces at practice and it is sure to be a super year.

You may have noticed when you registered there were 2 very different an interesting little dingus’s* you signed on for. The first dingus was that you would compete in the 2008 Provincials and dingus #2 that you would not remove your bathing suit in the communal shower at HCS. I sure hope both dinguses will absolutely be respected. It’s going to be great to have everyone out for Provincials and we sure don’t want to see any dingus’s in the shower…

To get the competitive juices flowing why not sign up for a swim meet? DSC is hosting the Scary on the 28^th of this month and the Etobicoke Not So Serious 11^th November and the meet that we actually get a mini taper for, the North York Gators Pentathlon in December. NT is legendary for the good times they have at swim meets.

In the mean time there are plenty of social events being planned, schemed and drawn up so keep tuned in, turn on and most importantly show up!!

*Dingus – is a ‘thing’ that you really don’t know how to describe.

October 11, 2007

Beavering Away In London!

Dear Roving Reporter:

Having returned from my workout at the Barnet Copthall Masters in North London (UK) I thought I would do well to send a letter your way for our website. I have to confess I'm having a bit of performance anxiety on this report, what with all the hullaballoo between our clubs...we're best in the world, you're not, we have Olympic-quality coaches, our parties are second to none, etc, etc.

And with the opportunity to meet this club on their own turf, I felt the need to prep myself with sober reminders about journalistic objectivity, open-mindedness and the like. I was prepared to keep my opinions to myself, should I discover some kind of athletic prowess that would forever hang over our club. I feared the answer to my pressing questions: "what if their club really is better?" and "does anyone actually have more fun than NTMSC?". Well, the answers are here, for all the team to see.

First, my host, Ivor Skrewkyk, was delightful as ever but ready to observe every move of this cunning beaver, should she miss a step. My first challenge was to meet him at the local tube station, and he provided me with instructions and a friendly tale that the only Canadian he had as a guest in the past had messed it up and went the wrong way. Naturally, I was running late, and in my haste to get there on time, left said instructions at the hotel. Ahem. This wasn't too much of a problem, because I remembered the stop started with the letter H.

Hamstead was where I got off, Hendon Central was where I needed to be. Never mind though, only a 10-minute detour. I was greeted with a warm beaver welcome upon arriving at the gates of Hendon Central and Ivor was so thoughtful (read: so bored waiting for me) that he had found a copy of The Canada Post for my reading enjoyment. I asked him if he was "one of those people who arrives to practice on time" (now that we were going to be about 5 - 10 minutes late). "Yes. Mathematically precise," he said. Ahem. Of course then he clarified - "the first to arrive and the last to get in the pool". Excellent! A classic Nicole S!

Once we got on deck, Joe introduced me to his fantastic swim coach, Ian. After some chit-chat, I picked a relatively safe lane and had a really decent workout. 4 x 150s with 15sec rests, kick/drill/swim; 4x100 25/75 fast/easy, 50/50 fast/easy, 75/25 fast/easy, 100 easy, 3 times through; 16x25s fast every 4th 25.

What struck me the most was the realization that my improvements in swimming circa 2004 were probably due to the fact that I had no one to chit chat with, and I was bent on making sure I looked like I knew what I was doing in the pool. Representing our club (slow as I may be) was the best workout imperative I've had in ages! I highly recommend club-visiting for a good reminder of what a non-social swim workout is all about.

But then I recommend returning to NT because we're so darn delightful! I hollered at Joe across the lane and asked if people were chatty and he said "no, we take all of this VERY seriously", implying that only serious clubs are Best In The World. Well to that I have one reply: that we are just such high-functioning, gifted athletes that we can swim circles around them AND chat in the pool. And by "we" I mean those speedy people in lanes one and two.

But truthfully, people were all pretty darned focused! Now, Joe did mention that it's Sunday night so the mourning for the week ahead has begun, and the women were really friendly and chatty in the changeroom, but as he drove me back to the tube station, I reflected on the ways of this city as he told me that they have no Thanksgiving-like fall festivities (I mean I know it's about pilgrims in the colonies and everything but it's a great fall event), they don't do Hallowe'en (apparently they don't like dressing up, and yet they call their swimsuits "costumes" - even on the signage! You walk out the door to the pool and it says "Please have your costume on before reaching the deck" or something!), they definitely don't do much for Easter, and apparently they don't really like New Year's. Now this is a town in need of a serious Solid Gold party!!

Anyway I could go on but I've got work to do finding something suitably unhealthy to combat the effects of the workout. On a final note, I'm told that about a dozen swimmers are planning on going to Perth. They do seem like a great bunch and I'm sure Christina would love to see many of us!

Also, the coach is looking for advice on youth swim clubs for a friend who moved to Maple - they need advice about where to go and were afraid about the intensity of NYAC. If anyone has advice, can you let me know and I'll forward your email address to Ian?

Best,

Erin Beavering-Away-In-London

Well I see that Doug’s been ranting lately. So what the heck I’ll give it a go. In fact what I have in mind here is less of a rant and more of a wander up a few roads that could lead somewhere but to keep it interesting I’ll just come back to a small point that Doug has already made. So here goes:

I went for a run a few days ago with a friend of mine who had to go “2d” (he did not actually say that he had to go “2d” but I wrote it to ensure that my writing stays couth and at a level my Editor in Chief would approve of … ahem). So what is “2d” you ask? It is an old British expression that my mother still uses. In the U.K. (pre 1971) to use a public Loo / W.C. / toilet one had to spend 1d or “Spend a Penny”. 1d would buy you ‘time’ to go wee wee. So it goes to reason that ‘2d’ being double the ‘time’ meant sitting down opening the paper and enjoying some quality self time if you know what I mean. The term ‘d’ comes from denarius – a Roman equivalent – and it took the British almost two millennia - in fact until 1971 to change the currency and the term to ‘p’ for pence or penny. No wonder the British hung onto Imperial measurements in the face of EU dire dictates for almost 40 years – the EU has finally backed down (in fact last week, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6988521.stm) on requiring the British to change. The lesson learned here: It is very difficult to apply a Napoleonic (French) measurement system on a small island (Britain) full of people who still call a ‘d’ a ‘p’. The upshot is that now when you visit the UK, you can still buy a pint of beer, pound of spuds and go 60 miles an hour. OK digression over…

Back to the run, 6km (4.2miles) into it, friend had to go plop plops in a big bad way. What to do? Well it just so happened - a Community Centre materializes before us ‘poof’. But guess what day it was - a Monday. You’ve read Doug’s rants. Yup..you got it - parking lot full of Community Centre Employees – Community Centre locked. My friend was walking around with that pained cinched up look – he had definitely passed the point of seeking sanitized refuge - hence the Community Centre immediately received a small perfumed gift in the nearby shrubbery.

I’m sure you can connect the dots and find some sort of poetry, symbolism or metaphor in this whole unfortunate incident. Needless to say my friend and I had a very animated conversation on the run back…

With all that being said – and that was quite a verbose way to say what ever it was. I am happy that we have our Mondays back – being that NT is a non city run fee paying group. I must say it was refreshing that e-mails, phone calls and impromptu meetings with City Councilors actually do have an impact on City Hall.

Last Saturday morning there was no workout due to the “long weekend”. That being the case a few NT swimmers and of course the requisite FONT (Friends Of NT) showed up at 10 AM sharpish to commence some swim-like activity.

First off, I was taken aback by how out of place we NT/FONT folk were at Summerville on a lovely Saturday morning in August. Most rec swimmers (i.e. not compelled to compete) are there to just generally float about and ‘go’ roughly in the direction of the posted board. Once they do a ‘few’ laps they tend to lie in the sun, do some people watching and perhaps doze off - Actually come to think of it, it certainly sounds like a very civilized pursuit and makes me question my zeal to hammer out a zillion descending 200’s on some silly pace time on such a gorgeous morning. But there we were - all 10 of us - ready to swim or die!

As we emerged onto the deck we encountered a rec swim fellow who was seriously stretching and wiggling his muscles for the impending plunge (feet first of course). Nothing new here you say – many NT/FONT are often trying to nudge immovable objects such as columns and walls with outstretched arms in the name of stretching. Our Bill C is known to actually do this as part of a race (see Provincials 2006). But what set this particular chap apart from your regular wall hugger, windmill impersonator and shoulder shaker/shrugger was his vigorous gluteus maximus wiggling (a la Britney at her sexiest(?)) and his concentration on getting the motions absolutely perfect.

Us NT/FONTs were a bit taken aback to say the least as we came upon this ‘awe’ful (inspiring?) display. Here was a guy taking his stretches and wiggles very, very seriously. We were obviously very self conscious and decided to skip the stretch thing and slide quickly into the pool. We slipped into the fast lane and all 10 of us proceeded to swim a regular 4000m workout (mainly 200’s). The well ‘warmed up’ gentlemen turned out to be quite a nice fellow and remarked to Erin how he admired our collective swimming abilities. Unfortunately Erin missed the chance to reciprocate the compliment with a comment about his super gyrational warm up routine. Erin … Tsk tsk!

At brunch after practice we shared other stories of rec swim encounters and especially swim etiquette. At the end, the consensus was to ‘go with the flow’ not to ruffle the feathers of other swimmers and just ‘quietly’ swim around them - after all we are supposed to “share” the pool. We did however go down the list of things that annoy us the most:

1) On busy days when it is difficult to pass slow swimmers, who are in a world of there own, not aware that for the last 200m you have been trying to overtake them and they refuse to stop at the end to let you pass. “Erm … Earth to plonker in from of me wearing a swim suit …hello!”

2) Again slow swimmers who hang around at the end and just as you come to the wall to turn; they take off in front of you. “Ugh” …much like the above – gormlessness personified.

3) Swimmers not following the flow correctly resulting in some interesting collisions. Umm… this is not necessarily a rec swim phenomenon … is it now??

4) And last but not least being told that you are too fast for rec swimming (!). It’s probably that you are actually making a wake and are drowning the ultra peaceful grey hair breaststrokers. Actually this probably is a really good time to practice “slow” swimming and work on drills.

Although the above is par for the course at rec swimming it all comes down to good manners and the ability to take a deep breath, smile and …ahem …rise above it all!

So rec swim is a fun time – relaxed, informal but you have to bring along your buddy Mr. or Mrs. Tolerance and a sense of humour. So next time workout is cancelled or it’s not scheduled let’s get together for another adhoc rec NT/FONT swim.

It was done and then it was done again. A lane 1 swimmer - MJ marries a lane 2 swimmer - Marc in May …and then the exact same thing happened last weekend - Jonathon (lane1) and Nicole (most of the time standing by Lane 2) got all knotted up in the lane rope. Fantastic! Congratulations to both the happy couples! It’s Honeymoon time in the first 2 lanes!

Coach Doug says that Jonathon and Nicole was the 4^th such union that was conceived and gestated at the NTMSC. Marc and MJ met in post grad school but the relationship grew and developed between NT workouts and sets. For some reason NT seems to provide the right sort of “je ne sais quoi” for this kind of lane merging type stuff. There seems to be a chlorinated love bug in the air as other swimmers are planning to tie a somewhat wet knot as well - although mostly to land lubber types with an obvious penchant for chloriney mates: Jason and Dr. Doug this summer and Anne (when the venue is sorted). Allison also recently announced her engagement. Exciting times ahead – congratulations to all!

As I think I mentioned before, being married or having a swimmer as a mate requires some getting used to. The reek of warm chlorinated skin piling into bed with you at night…the wet swim suit often left lying on the bed…and of course being woken up in the middle of the night to mumbles of “hey Phelps can I go ahead – this is supposed to be a negative split set.”Swimmers can also have an acute sense of comedic timing as well. My wife really enjoys it when we are both frantically getting ready to go shopping (I’m usually “frantically” pondering the editorials in the paper) and I say something really funny like “It’s OK Honey we’ll leave on the next blue top 5 seconds apart”. Oh boy does she ever laugh.

Anyway swimmers make great mates…they tend to be kind and considerate; needing to ‘streamline’ they often let the other person “take the lead”. They also tend to know a lot about pacing which makes bedtime activities really exciting and novel, for the male swimmer it goes like this ”OK honey this set is a 1x100, I definitely thinking of you as it’s going to start out being long and easy and then towards the end hard and fast …um…on 1:30” and for the female swimmer “OK Honey we’ll start out with you descending as long as I want, and then going least 25 sets of 1500 on 25 minutes”

So to all betrothed and the soon to be betrothed: may you have a long, happy and - when appropriate – a “swimmingly wet” marriage!

Well wease all ‘ad a fine time at the grotto - layin up by the cement pond with that cute little vinyl blanket in ‘er. Eatin’ great vittles washed down with the finest shine. Hot diggity we had on a ball. The kind folk who put on the spread was Katie Barbie Jane Hathaway – all decked in pink, Erin Ellie Rockin’ May – she came complete with a purhty John Dear belt buckle – The boys were sure turning there heads. Our Head Buckaroo was all decked out in yer Jim Dandy snake skin sneakers (snakers), a fine Gold’s Gym beater and he sure did git all them women folk worked up with his beauty teeth All the ladies were linin’ up to git a big peck on the cheek yee haa (An’ I must add our invited dintists were duly impressed with his dandy lookin’ pegs). I must say all the other boys at the gatherin’ were mighty put out by all the affections he was gittin.

Our Tractor drivin’ Trevor showed up with ‘is slick new ‘stache and matchin’ burns and his buddy Brett with a real slick hair do and rope belt. Purhty well all thte folk at the ho down were dressed proper – even Michael spent some green and fixed up ‘is teeth - agin much to the joy of the ladies. Strange tho’, there was some poor weird critter wearin’ a truly ugly orange and purple city slicker sport beater - he sure got yer funny looks. I tell ya some people are thick as 2 short planks when it comes to wearin’ proper party duds.

Music was provided by a couple of good ol’ boys from God’s Country - some mighty fine banjo pickin’ and geetar strumming. Janet’s Paw and their friend sure put on a nice showing. Derek joined in with his ‘tar and tried to keep up but I thinks he got all a mashed up coz his head wasn’t goin’ fast enuff for ‘is fingers. Still thar music just topped off the whole party just right.

The awards ceremonies went off swimmin’ like. The Rookie of the year ghost trophy went to a mighty fine lookin’ Sue and then Buckaroo got all confused coz he was tryin’ to find a swimmer in yer lane 5 to give the Taper ‘ward to. But dog gone it didn’t he just went ahid and give the taper to the whole dang lane. Imagine that. They all got the trophy coz I’m supposing they all swim like Fred’s catfish down at the cement pond…they’re all caught up in the swim spirit of it an’ all. I think Fred puts special concoctions in that their pond to make his Catfish swim so slick like. I’m also thinking that Buckarooo has some sorta spell over them too. Anyway I think theys mightily deserved the honours and good on them fo being such good swimmin’ sports.

So that’s all folks - that’s all the words I got in me right now. Another great party and as the Head Buckaroo keeps on a sayin’ we are all in the NT family. Yup we is all cuzins, brothers, sisters, mommas, poppas whatever – it don’t make no difference - havin’ a grand ol’ time.

So we are almost at the end of another season at the NTCC and we’re off to outdoor swimming at Summerville. Hooray for many of us who like a 50m (+/-) pools with a nice deep shallow end and plenty of room to do some really nice big ass arcing flip turns that really make one stop – literally (apparently this is something I need to work on!). Anyway Summerville also has nice soft slippery vinyl surfaces – comfy for our footsies pushing off the wall and for us head wall bangers doing backstroke - not noticing the flags - we are careening obliviously along in a mind meld with some cloud in the sky that looks like a group of turnips or perhaps the London Olympics 2012 Logo. Of course the best thing about this pool is the fact that it is outdoors. On a nice cool evening with a wind blowing off the lake it’s kinda like sailing – it always seems faster swimming down wind. To keep warm you have to swim fast with little rest and breast stroke is the warmest stroke as you take advantage of everything being warm and toasty underwater except when you stick your head up for a breath and get a nice blast of cool breeze...it is just so cool (it all makes for a great workout - except for that annoying constant noise – a high pitched whining / bleating sound emanating from the perpetually cold types). But really the outdoor experience comes into it’s own on a beautiful Saturday summer morning – with the trees gently swaying in the breeze and a few whispy (very non London Olympics Logo looking) clouds in the sky – little or no traffic noise. Bright sunshine. Coach Doug all smiles with the Hasselhoff tan sitting at the end of lane one with a stop watch in one hand and a figurative whip in the other commanding a frightening long typewriter set. Ahhh - the agony of total maximum physical effort in lane 1 only to be told an outrageously pathetic time and then the ecstasy of walking to the lane 6 chat/muck about lane. All this self inflicted drama on a beautiful summer morning - it really can’t be beat! Then to top it all off – we all haul on off to a delicious brunch at Nevada. Let’s go - Summer and Summerville!

I’ve been following this FINA controversy closely: – various definitions of the size of the world, swimming decedents of rebels, our coach being described as a head of various creatures; beavers, buckaroos, kangaroos etc (click on upthebeavers). Everyone from the President of Masters Swimming Canada, upthebeavers - Ivor Screwkyk (who started this whole thing) and Coach Doug seems to be in quite a tizzy over this whole FINA thing. So it got me thinking, especially after events this past weekend, and I can safely say without a shadow of doubt that - yes - we are actually the best Masters Swim Club on the planet.

Yup that’s right - the whole wide world – terra firma– not the world bounded by roads, the GTA or even oceans – but the one bounded by the giant vacuum of space (including all that flotsam - defunct satellite bits, golf balls and mars bar wrappers the astronauts like leave about while on their jaunts into space).

Let me explain how I arrived at this conclusion with some pretty bullet proof logic:

1) This past Sunday we obliterated all the competition at the 1^st annual EOMAC Pentathlon. There were a number of swimmers from a number of HUGE clubs in Ontario. Also there was a Quebec swimmer who flew in from the Québec provincials which definitely makes this meet a national and arguably an international event.

2) At the Québec Provincials (again - arguably an international event) in Québec city - our very own Bill (4 Or, 1 Argent, 1 Bronze) and Ms. Christina (her name á la Français - check out the results) - 1 Or, 5 Argent. Literally cleaned up. That other fellow who is almost an NTer - Wes - walked away with 5 Or and 1 Argent…AND a world record in the 200 back.

I think FINA will no doubt agree and will be so impressed that they will come up with some sort of trophy to bestow upon us … something like the FINA Best Masters Swim Club in the Whole Wide World Trophy (BMSCWWWT - of course not to be confused with Burlington Master Swim Club) - it has nice ring to it wouldn’t you say?

By the way there was some remarkable swimming in the pentathlon. NT was at both ends of extreme swimming – lots and little. Think about this - 10 events in 4 hours. Trevor, Derek, Eric and our Jonathon swam the pentathlon relay as well as there own individual pentathlon events. Amazing or just nuts? Both I think. At the other end of the spectrum we had some - I would say - affluent (?) sprinters who spent $30 to swim a 50 which works out to 60cents/meter. But no matter - they swam brilliantly - they were rested and full of vigour…their presence and points made for NT to be tops and an even more enjoyable meet for all. Check out the trophy in the NT display case, you can’t miss it – it is a humungous shiny gold chalice with a male figurine swimmer assuming some sort of position on top. If you’re male, over 40 and been to the doctor lately – you’ll know what I mean.

Masters Swim Canada President Chris Smith has stepped into the latest controversy involving NTMSC. The following is a letter sent to Up The Beavers, and Masters Swimming Canada.

British Beavers were thought to be extinct following the great British Beaver pelt hunt of 1867. The little known Henry IX - the illegitimate son of Queen Victoria and Norris the chimney sweep - had a ‘special thing’ for Beaver pelts and rather oddly liked to have his mother’s guards wear them on their heads while they pointlessly marched back and forwards in front of Buckingham Palace for the future pleasure of millions of tourists. In 1867 - ironically the founding year of the country of Canada and the Beaver as it’s National symbol! - Henry decreed that all British beavers were to be turned into hats for her guards. Or so he thought. Apparently a few beavers escaped the cull and formed a Masters Swim Club in North London: Up The Beavers

This rare modern day Beaver (Castor Corblimeyus) - was spotted 2 weeks ago lurking in and around lane 1 at the start of Saturday’s NT practice. It was actually eyeing the take down of a lifeguard’s chair when it caused quite a commotion. Not having seen a male foreign beaver before, many female NT swimmers squeaked and squealed with delight and immediately ran over and started stroking the smooth beaver’s pelt and prodding at the Beaver’s tail. This particular beaver took it all in with typical aplomb – sniffing, salivating, looking about and grunting (as Beavers do). This eager beaver then slipped into lane 1 and started to work it’s little tail hard trying to keep up to the blistering pace of the lane 1 swimmers. After the workout with the beaver all shagged out - the NT’s female swimmers went to work again using alluring gesticulations and stroking - in a few seconds they were able to completely revive the beaver and entice it to come to NT’s Saturday Breakfast ritual. The now perky beaver pronounced in quite recognizable English, “jolly good then - off we go”. Sitting at breakfast surrounded by a gaggle of giggling NT females the beaver seemed most bemused and aroused and once again started to grunt, sniff, salivate and look around. Following a meal of lox and a 2X4 of fresh untreated pine it then snagged a ride to it’s temporary lodge and apparently returned to it’s native terrain via a train (ugh I know - bad pun) to Montreal and a Plane ride to London (?).

The beaver (aka Ivor Screwkyk) subsequently wrote about his experience with NT at Upthebeavers.com. Even though the NT Beef Knish secret is now exposed and the supposed FINA inquiry underway, NT‘s Coach Doug meekly commented innocently and politely “what can I say?”.

Before leaving, the Beaver also graciously extended an invitation for any NT swimmer wandering around North London needing a chlorine fix to hook up with the Beavers for a practice.

As our Roving Reporter reports on the various ins and outs of NT. Who would have thought that his international contacts would bring a fellow Roving Journalist to our humble pool. This was the case on Saturday March 31 where NT welcomed Joe Twyman (Ivor Skrewkyk - editor of Up The Beavers), from the Barnet Copthall Masters Swimming Club of London, Great Britain. Outside of the marching band, the official welcoming committee of Erin and Katie made Joe feel right at home. Even Coach Jen got into the act with a very suspicious sounding English accent. Joe came into a very tough workout and in typical Brit style, held his own with the speedsters of NT. The highlight of course, was his introduction at breakfast, to a Yitz's Beef Knish. Again Joe held a very British stiff upper lip although one could swear it curled one or two times....

North Toronto Masters Swim Club wishes to announce our official Roving Reporter link to our new sister Club in Britain: Up The Beavers UK's Leading Website for Masters Swimming.

Porpoise Eric, on the left, takes on Orca Derek in a very exciting guppy verses elder 200 Mix Medley Relay.

Kaboom Kaboom … The rocks were flying … explosive starts, turns and finishes. Coach Doug’s mantra this year paid off in spades. We had some super swimming this past weekend in Sudbury. I’ll be expounding on some interesting wet and dry (?) side activities. Once again this puppy is a long one, so sit back, put your feet up, beverage in left hand and scroll wheel/ball with the right.

A few months ago Coach Doug was a little apprehensive about fielding a decent team for Sudbury and it started out as a bit of a winger …but momentum grew and with goading, arm twisting, veiled threats and to help Doug out I actually tried my hand at a little extortion - it went like this – hey I’ll write nasty things about you if you don’t go and I’ll write a nice thing if you do go. And since I actually can’t write nasty things about other swimmers the threat was really quite empty. Anyway Jen is cool.

Eventually we had 26 swimmers going north to Sudbury. Key fashion statements were on display by both the major teams (in terms of numbers - Aurora and London) on and off deck. The meet was overrun with a busload and more of Ducks complete with matching ducky tees, tattoos and to top it off - the men were flashing rather fetching bright yellow manicured toe nails. Close behind in fashionista was at least another bus load of Silver Dolphins. At the Saturday social they were resplendent in silver / grey with the women sporting sparkling tiaras. Coach Doug was so impressed with both team’s spirit that he has now instituted an official NT cap policy – if you wear a cap you are obliged to don an official NT cap during meets. i.e. Jen would be really super cool still if she had worn her NT cap during the relays.

For the most part the team got to Sudbury in a very straight forward manner. You know, open car door, sit down, and if you were driving - put transmission into D (or use the 6-5 speeds), drive north and stop for pee in Parry sound etc... However one dedicated swimmer had a wee bit of a challenge – to get from the far reaches of Hudson’s Bay (The True North) to Sudbury (actually a bit of a ‘northern’ fib). Marc should be awarded with some sort of Indiana Jones award. He took pretty well all forms of available Canadian transport: a skidoo, helicopter, 4x4 over an ice road, a dual mode plane – a regular 30,000’ variety that converted very quickly - by having a cabin window accidentally blow out - to a 5000’ machine (complete with oxygen mask thingies). Describing seemingly petrifying event Marc blithely said (quote), “I found it kind of interesting that it was snowing in the cabin”. Luckily the dual mode plane found a disused NORAD airfield to land on. Whereby another plane took Marc to Kingston (I know – why Kingston? - don’t ask) anyway from there a cab to a Train bound for Toronto’s Union station, subway, streetcar and finally he had to drive his Mazda protégé for a lovely 4 hour drive back up the way he came to Sudbury. In effect he did a “J” tour of most of Ontario. He started out at 11 am Friday Morning and was in his beautiful fiancé’s arms at the Travelodge in Sudbury at 3:43 am Saturday morning (16hr 43 min). The really impressive or slightly nutty bit - both I think (it really helps to be a little nuts to be on this team!) – was that at 8 am he was warming up for the first event - the 200 IM.

Missing in our line up this year was ‘I like a challenge’ Bill – but thankfully his spirit of hardcore swimming was carried down to 2 guppies (<35?) and they nicely book ended the meet. Pete B. already to zing in more ways than just swimming (i.e. he had a nasty stomach flu) started it all off on Friday with a very respectable 400IM warm up for the next but one event, the 1500. Interestingly after completing this feat, our Pete really wasn’t the same for the rest of the weekend. On Sunday; Rob, after swimming all his chosen events during the weekend (including the 1500) and the requisite 117 relay events we were all signed up for, he whipped off a 200 Fly and swam the next event – the 800 free. These guys are not sprinters.

There were plenty of other gutsy swims – and one especially was the women’s 200 fly. Now before I get started on this, I must confess something – right after the meet - e-mails were flying around thanking the Team / Coach Doug for the wonderfully Sudbury spiritual experience bla bla etc. Well some NT swimmers who shall remain nameless identified themselves as ‘flakey emotional’ sprinters. I am a sprinter and hence have a cottage in Flake City and am prone to the odd emotion (especially when on a swim meet diet of powerbars, dried fruit and Redbulls). Sue (a fellow flake) was finishing up the 200 Fly (now that’s a sprint) - feeling great for aproximately186m of the race and then all of a sudden her lungs didn’t know whether to breathe in or out (she hyper-ventilated). Having to stop – she shook her head, gasped and after a couple more attempts with the crowd cheering her on finally finished the race to win a gold medal. Overcome with emotion she waited until the race was finished. An 83 year old in lane 1 was also overcome with emotion when she stopped 5m from the end and grabbed the lane ropes – the crowd was going nuts. Sue went over to console her fellow swimmer and many in the crowd also became - overcome with emotion. At this point it was time for your flakey reporter to leave and start thinking really really hard about Nickel extraction and its impact on the local economy.

Other gutsy NT swims were abundant in the relays. Coach Doug did a wonderful job with sorting out who was doing what in the relays. Each of us pretty well had to race on average 213 relays over 2 days - and once again it was the Guppies (120+) against the “Elders” (160+) as Doug likes to call us. In the 132^nd relay your flakey reporter was chased down like a Cheetah (yup Ben Johnson http://www.cbc.ca/consumers/market/murmurs/archives/2006/20060327_cheetah.html style) on a March Hare with Myxomatosis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myxomatosis on the final 100 of the men’s medley. Luckily the pool wasn’t long enough and your Myxo Elder out touched Cheetah Trevor by 15/100ths. In the 200 Mix Medley Relay, this time, the 160+ Cheetah - Coach Doug - close the gap but was unable to out touch a leaner 120+ Super Bunny – Rachel.

Speaking of Cheetah’s, we had a couple of cases of being labeled Dairy Queen or DQ during the relays. Anchor Guppy - Cheetah Trevor pounced too early during the free relay resulting in a round of Dilly Bars for young ones – allowing the elders to score an extra one over the guppies. The other DQ was instigated by Brent who jumped in for a cool down while the race was still in progress. Luckily 2 other teams also jumped in – so the 3 teams formed a tri-lateral all powerful syndicate for protesting the DQ. With much pleading, groveling and playing up the confusion with the presence of a permanent warm up lane in lane 8 - we were reinstated – nice job coach! Lesson learned though – wait till the race ends before a) jumping in to cool off (very DQable) and b) getting out of the pool (not DQable but it’s just good form to wait until the last swimmer finishes)

There were plenty of other notable swims such as Michael B’s sub 30 second 50 free and Kate B knocking 5 seconds off 50 free.

Believe it or not these weekends are not all about the swimming. In fact most of the usual things that happen on these road trips happened on this one. For instance leaving someone (Suzy) behind at the banquet hall – only to have them escorted home by a fast swimmer, super nice guy and special friend of NT - Dr. Perfect from a rival team (grr.. ). Hotel Security asking us to be quiet during our Saturday night hotel room binge, making a mess in a hotel room (thanks for the sparkly streamers Sue/Zuzanna!). Watching the Leafs lose after being up 4-1 and then the next day they win..ugh and then finally on the way home having an accident in the Parry Sound washroom (yup that dried fruit, powerbar, redbull diet is a real bitch). So really nothing too out of the ordinary, but combine it with all with the swims and characters we have on this team and woah – quite a memorable trip.

So a big thanks to Coach Doug and everyone who helped pull this one off (including all those people various pilots, skidoo operators, engineers etc…who helped Marc get safely to Sudbury). We certainly blasted some big rocks this past weekend!

It’s funny; lately I have had a bit of a love affair with the IM. I say ‘a bit’ because I’m sure it hopefully won’t last very long. The thing about IM is that you have to be half decent at all the strokes…most people like to specialize in maybe two strokes – and then muddle their way through the other two. I, on the other hand, am not bad at free, pretty awful at fly and truly ghastly at back and breast.

Of the IM events, the 100m is an especially dizzy number to race - a typical 100 IM for me is like this: Beep goes the starter - I’m groovin’ to the smooth dolphin fly motion and then wham I’m on my back and flapping away like I’m on a broken BBQ rotisserie, then whoof I’ve flipped over again and am doing my best frog imitation – futilely pouncing away at my own bow wave. At the end of 3 lengths my noggin is spinning - ”Thank God” I think “I’ve only got a length of free left” but my swimming brain / stroke / muscle connections are in ruins. I have to rely on muscle memory to swim any semblance of freestyle to finish the race. I find I am literally talking to my body parts…”OK left arm forward, now right arm …good … ok boys …please, a little faster …ok legs what the heck are you doing down there? What is this side to side stuff? no no no - up and down - … sheesh!”. At the end of the race I am completely spun – I struggle to get out of the pool, shaking and stumbling by the timers to get my towel and fumble my flip flops on.

200 IM is only slightly better in that my brain/muscles get in some sort of rhythm before having to change stroke but like all 200s - it is really just a very long nasty sprint. For me, the end of the 200 IM results in pretty much the same stunned incoherence as the 100 but with at least double the fatigue. The 400 IM – I can’t really fathom or comment on as I have yet to attempt it, but it’s safe to say - I’d probably be unconscious at the end of it.

So why do I have a love affair with IM - you ask? I don’t know really, perhaps you may think my hero was super IMer Alex Bauman or it’s because I’m a real swim geek with a penchant for masochism. Actually I think it’s because I secretly like that weird wobbly feeling – yup I know what you’re thinking - it takes all sorts to make up this world - nuts and all!

"The girls are out to Bingo and the boys are gettin' stinko,
And we think no more of Inco on a Sudbury Saturday night.
The glasses they will tinkle when our eyes begin to twinkle,
And we'll think no more of Inco on a Sudbury Saturday night".

Ah yes the wise words of Stompin’ Tom Connors. This year’s provincials happen to be in Sudbury March 23 to 25 - and I can see your eyes twinkling at the thought already. Imagine a true Canadian swimming adventure (definitely not that high falutin’ wine tasting thing last year): We’re going to a place that put Canada on the map with a big bang (literally) – the 2^nd largest crater in the world - the Sudbury Basin. Home of the Big Nickel and one of greatest Canadian swimmers ever Alex Baumann.

A drive up north to Sudbury: 2.5, 3.5 - whatever hours to get there. Stopping at the many Timmys along the way (how quintessential is that!). We’ll swim our little hearts out Friday night with no doubt all that distance stuff. Then we settle into the usual NT silliness at the hotel – it’s just like age group swimming all over again except it’s “Adult” age group. This is followed my more swimming the next day and then the finale: The Sudbury Saturday Night - NT style. Oh yeah, I can see it now.. The cadre of girls with their dabbers, smokes and slurpies in hand etc. out to Bingo… the boys headin’ to the local tavern for some pickles eggs, hot rods, washed down with quarts of 50. The girls and guys to meet up later to share the bingo winnings buying rounds of swimming pools. Giddy Up….

What the heck I’m sure it’s only relays the next day and the lovely drive home…

I also know your swims are likely to be very FAST. The pool – as I remember – is full of “fast water” or something like that. I was at a meet there many years ago and most of our team did their PBs. The pool seems to have that special indescribable quality that makes you swim faster. Of course there is also the fact that Coach Doug will have us all in top physical and mental form for the meet!

First off I’d like to wish everyone a Shuper De Duper holiday and New Year: Pound that Egg Nog, woof down that Christmas pudding … enjoy enjoy … plenty of swimming in the new year to burn it all off! Oh and - by the way - hot off the presses - Jason has just become engaged this past weekend! Congratulations to Jason and Carolyn!

Lately NT has performed exceedingly well in both swimming and ahem…making merry. Looking over the results of the past few swim meets (Etobicoke, Kingston and the North York Pentathlon ) we really did well. Countless podium finishes and looking at the pictures of the meets it also looked like we were having a great time producing personal bests. Most of the Pentathlon NT girls managed somehow to swim all in the same heat providing a spectacle of excellent swimming - great turns, charging the wall without bumping their heads etc…!

In the merry making department - The Solid Gold Party went off with a bang! Everyone did the super freak and had a groovy trip to funky town and someone even ended up in the oh so hip closet! A Far out Thanks to Solid Gold Sister Erin and all who helped decorate bring food, bringing the disco and the ball etc…

Talking about superb swimming and parties brings me to one person who personifies these two specialties and also has a 3^rd area of expertise – great coaching. Our Janet Mayville, who will, unfortunately for us, be leaving for her 2 loves: Dan and warmer climes (Florida) in the New Year. I’ve just jotted down a few things that I have learned from the past 18 months of knowing Janet: Swimming – Janet’s is the Karen Kain of the pool. She is a ballet dancer that manages somehow to swim around water. In fact many swimmers complain that swimming behind her is like swimming alone – there is no drafting – she’s just too dang efficient! She also trains to her own beat, often eschewing the speed demons in lane 1 to work on technique in other lanes and it obviously pays off: She holds the 2006 world record in 100 free (age 30-34). A truly ‘world class’ swimmer (You can actually justify using that rather worn cliché here). Janet is also the zest (yes that’s right just like the soap) - intense refreshing and …um… clean(!) of any gathering. Brunch is a few decibels louder and cheerier, parties a little spicier (check out how many photographs there are of Janet licking/kissing something somewhere!). She just seems to always whip things up. She is the antithesis of introvert - the consummate extrovert. If something wild is going on – you know that Janet is either the instigator or making it even wilder. Coach extraordinaire. Janet is a natural; Enthusiastic, energetic and caring. Coach Doug and Coach Janet – Two type ‘A’ passionate swimmers that often create complimentary and sometimes interesting divergent dynamics, but with all the best intentions – to do the best for the team. We’ll definitely miss her on deck.

We’ll miss her in many more ways I’m sure. Janet promises to keep swimming for NT and visit regularly… She apparently can’t make Provincials in Sudbury as she has a commitment in Las Vegas (a birthday?). Imagine that: forgoing a trip to the home of the Big Nickel, unnaturally occurring moonscapes and Science North to visit unnaturally occurring Casinos and an Eiffel Tower in a desert. Choices, choices!!

If I may be so bold as to speak on behalf of the team – as I’ve spoken to many about Janet’s departure (and still - a few of us are still in denial, I’m still hoping for a Spring 07 return). We profoundly thank her for all she’s done for NT and wish her all the best for her future.

So far this season NT has participated in 2 swim meets and one party. Both meets (Etobicoke and Kingston) were well attended and our swimmers did very well. Looking at the results many - 1^st and 2^nd places – nice. As Coach Doug says we saw some great times, something is definitely working! One thing that did jump off the page was the low male turnout (although those that did participate were all smiles with the lopsided ratio). Are our men scaredy cats? Are we too busy? Come on guys – we need to show up and do our thing. Let’s try and have a good turnout for the Pentathlon in December.

The party held by our gracious host’s, Nicole and Jonathan, was a great success with many swimmers mingling and trying out Jonathon’s latest Sake and Single Malt (Scotch) blends. The last time we were all gathered here in March - we were celebrating Nicole & Jonathan’s engagement. To keep the trend going our Anne waltzed in the door amid squeals of delight as she sported what looked like the Hope diamond on her ring finger. A very happy and “light in the wallet” Alec followed. Nicole kindly lent us her sunglasses for those wishing to gaze at the dazzling rock. Anne said she was looking forward to wearing it during practice as she can use it as a knuckle duster - as she said ‘from now on people are going to think twice about wandering over to my side of the lane’.

The next NT party is “Solid Gold” on Dec 2^nd . Please see Erin for details. Erin is also doin’ a hip dude thing - she’ll be grabbin’ yo food for the daily food bank. Now, if you prefer not to “ruin your super groovin’ look” - wearing your super tight bell bottoms, ‘fro and gold chains - while lugging groceries, then just bring cash and Erin will cut a cheque on behalf of us all - man.

See ya’ll poolside or slinging Singapore slings at Erin’s Solid Gold groove thang.

So here is the second instalment of the survey summary. I really never thought it would be this much work to compile, with only 28 respondents the feedback was still profoundly profuse – thank you! I apologize if a special nugget of information that you wanted everyone to know about was not included in these summaries. Please point it out to me and I will endeavour to make mention of it in the next article.

Wow quite an array of activities we do other than swimming…from Roman Chair spotting to golf boozing and all kinds of water sports – ahem – that would be the likes of kayaking and canoeing. We have 8 Tri-athlete type swimmers. Also, interestingly we have 8 who are of the ‘split’ personality Tri type…not loony enough to do put them all together but singularly mad enough to ‘enjoy’ them separately. We have in our midst 2 Muay Thai aficionados – this apparently is a polite name for good old fashioned kick boxing (swimming and kick boxing might actually be a good combo – maybe at one practice we could combine the two of them? – perhaps a bathing suit optional hypoxic muay thai session in the deep end? – what about it Coach Doug?). I do have to mention that we have one poor swimmer who had to give up water polo because his horse drowned….how sad.

I structured the answer to this question so nonsensically that I really don’t know how to analyse it. If you remember it was matrix and you were supposed to tick off your 5 favourite events ranging from 50s of each stroke to swimming across Lake Ontario etc. Well some ticked off more than 5, others less - so the percentages are all messed up. To sum it up as best I can: 23/28 of you like 50s and 100s. 18 like 200s. 7-8 of you liked to swim 400 to 5k swims and 3 of you actually liked the whole idea of smearing animal fat all over your body, swimming vast distances in freezing cold water while breathing diesel fumes from your support boat. So, bottom line – sprinters rule (or maybe sprinters like to fill out surveys - who knows?).

8) If you have a significant other, how supportive are they of your swimming pursuit?

This was very encouraging…most of you have very supportive partners - even the chlorine smell does not get in the way of important ‘couple’ activities. One respondent said that if they actually gave up swimming the relationship would be over (an NT Lifer perhaps?). For those with no significant other, it is pretty well a given that the prospective partner must at least accept your addiction to chlorine.

9. What do you do other than swimming - work/school/ other "time filling" stuff? Hobbies?

Survey said…Basically you are a hard working, well (?) educated bunch with lots of hobbies but very light on sex! 92.6% responded of you said that you work. For schooling; 60% responded ranging from a succinct “F*** No” to a few brain boxes finishing up post graduate work. Hobbies ranged from the onerous chore of drinking (v.common) to sleeping (almost as common) and surprisingly only one ‘sex’. Apparently for this person sex comes after canoeing (?).

This question was requested by Erin as she is one who enjoys hosting some of our most infamous parties and she wanted some feedback. I must lay it all out for you here – I have consolidated it a bit – but I think the table speaks for itself. Imagine some of these parties.

#1 sounds great: Conversation goes something like this….”hey man wow did you see that guy he’s wobbling falling over, I’m on my 10^th Red Bull - can’t stop talking - great Powerbar - wanna do some Raw bacon with me, my left eye is doing an amazing twitch - check it out …Ok let’s play rock paper scissors again”

#15 is most intriguing ... go to the beach and shave down, drink unpronounceable booze … and eat pizza … après Saturday morning Summerville practice perhaps?

Perhaps some combination event would be good as well ... a toga / body painting session with whipped cream / steak / sake / banana colada…

Anyway – That’s it. Thank you all - 28 of you - for taking the time to fill the survey out. If I do another one I will try and make it easier and faster to fill out. Oh yes and speaking of filling things out…have you signed up / updated your meters for the Million Metre Challenge yet?

So now I have some 26 responses to the survey - I guess since this is a totally subjective, unscientific, arbitrary and silly survey I can write whatever I want. “Ah” - you - a discerning NT swimmer says, “you are the Roving Reporter – you must be balanced, unbiased and objective”. OK OK - in a loud voice I say to you “I WILL TRY MY BEST” then under my breath I will mumble and grumble rude words about how “my Best” is really a load of claptrap.

So below are the goods…this report will deal with the first 5 of the 10 questions of the survey, the next 5 in a future report – also I couldn’t resist some RR comments in there as well:

One of our new swimmers goes by the name Pontiac. I like this name – not because I work for GM – of course not. It is because Pontiac was a great leader and since this person swims in lane 2 - they need a good leader. Having swum with Pontiac this summer at Summerville this person is definitely no Aztec - I’d say more of a Trans Am or GTO. Other interesting names were: Chewy (a penchant for Eat More candy bars?), Long Jon (referring to his long strokes of course), Tug (…5 seconds is 5 seconds), Tooth Fairy (Exactly! who needs teeth to swim anyway, there’s money in them molars) and T bone (small t or BIG T?).

There is a couple of laser surgery aficionados out there obviously aloof to this question. A full 28% enjoys this activity (?!) The open feedback was most compelling. There was also reference to having multiple people involved in the shaving experience – you know the - I shave you - you shave me thing. Somebody also said that they enjoyed shaving after a long weekend in the bush (I suppose they must enter the bush with no shaving kit or just that they forget to shave as they are having so much fun doing things that one does in the bush…fishing, hunting or perhaps collecting invertebrates).

a. It is representative of our team and yes we do have a disproportionate number of twenty somethings. Therefore a message to other teams: “watch out” we are going to “kill” in this age group and walk away with all the medals. Or

b. As we age we ignore surveys - that are e-mailed to us - until we retire. Our lone 65-69 year response calls him/herself “elder!” (that’s right with the exclamation point) and is a photographer who likes breast stroke. Hmmm I like photography too: snap snap, grin grin, wink wink, say no more say no more….

This is a toughie to summarize – who designed this survey anyway? The survey received some wonderful responses. There was a lot of input about the crazy website and Coach Doug’s infectious passion for swimming. One person was sold when they witnessed NT behaviour at a meet! We were ‘young and fun’ (see graph above?).

Basically everyone with one exception, were swimmers of some kind or another in a previous life – age group, high school, uni. This one exception had to get into it because of that irritating 50 minutes or so at the beginning of every Ironman. Of note: another person was driven to it because his wife tried getting him into running marathons.

Lots of good fibs submitted for best times: 57.9 for 100 fly - yeah right, 18.22 for 1500 – pull the other one, 57.6 for 100 back – this from a guy who calls himself a car and never swam before he was 18…wow.

What a modest bunch - only 21 responses here. OK let’s do them all… Hooking up with whatshername at some meet while drunk (is this embarrassment? doesn’t everyone try and do this?). Carted off on a spinal board at a meet (one can fake a spinal?) ALL the guys getting to wear her “tops” at an NT party (yeah it was great - I got the Lasenza one c/w the foam thingies). Upchucking OJ after a race (orange you glad you didn’t have the Irish stew). Showering naked (!) when a rather surprised member of the opposite sex walks in (you never explained what you did to him oops … or her…?). Thought they were 18 and in shape – actually 27 and out of shape (OK what is this - I keep thinking this and I’m ahem 29). Getting bombed with cold water filled swim caps while taking a sneak poop during a meet (wet toilet paper is such a drag -?-). Gets embarrassed easily with little rest between sets (? - Guess breathing hard can be a little embarrassing - ?). Displaced embarrassment – naked brother walks out onto pool deck (nudistic empathetic fraternicus syndrome?). Came onto pool deck (!) wearing knickers instead of swimsuit (frilly ones I hope)Wearing a guys see-through bathing suit (was it grey by chance?). Swimming fly (OK what’s new here? Fly IS an embarrassment). Ottawa cougar bait (No worries - I’ll help lead the anti cougar diversionary tactics unit at the next meet). Completing a 50 free - naked - leaving bathing suit behind on the dive (and all that scraping along the bottom of the pool…yikes). Popping out a shoulder & smashing head doing back stroke then having “Mr. Hunk” pull you out (oh you poor frail damsel … I definitely smell a ruse here). Pulling an extreme Bill C: going from “swimmers take your marks” completely dressed to winning the 1500 m - diving in 200 seconds (3 minutes 20) late - only to be disqualified (this is just plain wrong). A man using a woman’s size 14 swim suit for an NT practice (dedication has no mores!). Being sent home early from a meet due to alcohol related illness (surely this is more of an accomplishment?). Relocating a shoulder during a 100 back (come on that’s an old one, it’s just an excuse to get the team chiros/physios all interested in prodding and rubbing you all over after the race).

The end of the Summerville season on August 30^th is the start of the NT September break. This year it is a whole month. So what is an avid NT swimmer supposed to do for one whole month?

Well actually there is plenty to do. To top off all that training you did over the summer season there is the St. Mary’s 5km Open Water swim Sept 10 http://soloswims.com/. Every year a bunch of NT swimmers make the trek to the quarry - it is really more like a huge outdoor swimming pool – the temperature should be very agreeable and probably there will be very little in the way of ocean swell. The entry deadline has passed, if you missed it you are probably a sprinter anyway…

I’m sure there are plenty of other things to do as well. NTers can brush up on their running and cycling (Our Sunday group should grow over the next few weeks), and enter the last few triathlons of the season:

For most of September many of us actually do nothing interspersed with thoughts about doing something. The process kinda goes like this, “Right now I should go out for a run…mmmm …Oh wait there’s another Family Guy episode ..or 2”. You know how it goes. Anyway whatever you do have fun and we’ll all be on deck at the end of September for another season of wet, fast fun.

Oh and by the way I just want to plug something that our 1.3 million meter long Coach Doug has been pushing and that is the Million Meter Challenge. A few of us have been diligent in updating our meters after each workout on the website. It is kinda fun so see how far we swim…So if we were to swim east from Toronto we would be swimming by the Thousand Islands – in the Kingston and Brockville area and it took us only 9 months. Of course our Doug and current leader is frolicking with les phoques way out along the Gaspé coast with Wes close behind him. The other thing that I really like about the website is that it can track all your swim times which are linked to the actual meet results – guaranteeing that you will never forget that memorable Grand Piano Finale of a certain 100m free. One can also track workouts in those 2 other irrelevant sports, running and cycling. Give it a whirl…it might even be a good motivator for you (as if you need more ….)

I have just returned from a family vacation, we went to the UK to visit my 2 brothers and France to eat some bread & cheese and drink some wine - oh yes there was Le Tour to watch and of course we wanted the experience of a Tour rider so we rented bikes and rode part of a stage and up Mont Ventoux. Just to see what all the fuss was about. And fuss they should: the climb is ridiculously long - 21k - and ridiculously steep – averaging 7.5%, they should rename it Big Vanderby hill! It took us 2.5 hours to climb up and 23 minutes to come down.

But being a wannabe diligent NT swimmer and wanting to stay in some sort of swim semblance I thought it would be prudent to try and mix in a swim workout or two during the trip. Hopping onto Google. I managed to find masters clubs close to both brothers: one in Yorkshire – the Halifax Swimming Club and the other in Sussex - the Chichester Cormorants (a Cormorant is some sort of seabird, that I suppose swims quite fast). I sorted out when I wanted to swim and then e-mailed the respective coaches. They responded with very welcoming invitations to swim with their teams. Needless to say I was due for these workouts. I was on a steady diet of beer, penguins (a chocolate ‘biscuit’), ploughman’s lunches, fish and chips, spotted dick (with custard) and late night curries. I felt very welcome with both teams and they put this particular ever expanding Canuck through his paces.

The workout with the Cormorants proved quite interesting. I arrived at 6:25 for a 6:30 a.m. swim half asleep. I was directed to the unisex “change room”. I had heard of them in Switzerland but never in stuffy old England. I started to wake up in a hurry. This should be interesting I thought. I had exciting visions of naked women cavorting all around …actually I could go on describing what was going on in my naughty mind, but I won’t. Alas it was not to be. The room consisted of many cubicles with showers and benches and lots of signs telling us where to go and what to do and how to do it, very depressing. I ventured out onto the deck to a 33 metre pool - actually I kinda felt like Goldilocks finding the not too long / not too short pool. I quite enjoyed swimming in it. We did 33’s, 66’s and 133’s. It was a nice change from the standard 25/50m pools. Obviously they cannot have official meets (or Galas as they call them in the UK) but they do host fun Galas. I found both these workouts added a unique dimension to the vacation; meeting fellow swimmers, seeing new pools and experiencing different clubs. It was all good fun.

So if you are going on vacation or just visiting a town and want to go for a swim, contact the relevant swimming association and/or Google to find a masters club close by and send them an e-mail, you never know what you will find!

My-o-my what a time was had at the annual NT 2006 team party…this year it was held at Katie’s house. The weather more than co-operated – basically a perfect day. 40 – 50 people showed up determined and ready for a good time!