28 February 2026 Given the massive sun exposure I’ve had over my life, from swimming & lifeguarding as I grew up, to a quarter of century living between Texas and Arizona, it’s a bit surprising I haven’t had more “suspicious growths” … but, over the years of periodic skin checks, I’ve been remarkably problem-free.    Which makes me inexperienced when it comes to what happens when the dermatologist does remove something for further investigation.    Which means I wasn’t aware

22 February 2026 The sun set long ago on calendar year 2025, but a busy start to 2026 ... and time for reflection ... has delayed my "So what did I learn from all my training and racing in 2025?" post. So what did I learn from all my training and racing in 2025? Much of this is about re-learning old lessons, as I'm an inveterate forgetter. Race early, race often After much of my 2024 training being oriented towards endurance for completing the Lake Windermere end-to-end swim

1 February 2026 I tackled the easiest question - where geographically did I swim in 2025? - in my last post and I'm punting the hard thinking - what did I learn from 2025? - for my third post, but this one's not that easy either. I swam in 77 different pools in 2025 and two bodies of water ( off the coast of Crete and near Zug ): what were my favorite pools of 2025? One way to answer this is by understanding where I kept going back to, again, and again, and again. There'

20 January 2026 I'm not into numerology, so I wouldn't call this angelic , but, if I had young kids** and lived in Camden, I'd bring them here: With a gently sloping beach entry and very fun-looking water slide (closed during Fitness Swimming time), this is probably a great place for families. It's not the place for serious swim workouts, though it was better than I anticipated given some of the online comments I had seen. There were three lanes with proper lane ropes as yo

11 January 2026 " It was not true that travel was a false god and that you took your troubles with you and nothing could change.  There was the unimaginable and unforeseen thrill of being away, of renewal, and remembering that the world was huge and various, and you and your concerns were small.” => Ian McEwan, What We Can Know I will hold myself forward as world-class in appreciating the unimaginable and unforeseen thrill of being away. I got my first passport as I neared g

30 December 2025 I ended 2025 the way I spent the year: racing! After discovering the uncrowded, super-clean and well-maintained 25-yard pool at the Ron Edwards YMCA in Burlington, Ontario, I decided to use this pool for this year’s entry into the MEMO Swim Team’s 400 Kick-For-Time .  I paired a Christmas gift – a new FINIS Swim Fuse entry level tech suit (more on this below) – with their Smart Goggles to time this late morning on the 30 th .  I had one of the lanes in the d

16 December 2025 I don't think I've ever been more surprised by a city than I was by Warsaw. Admittedly, I had done very little reconnaissance ahead of this trip so my pre-conceived notions of Poland were overly-influenced by memories from letters from a friend of mine who worked here in the post-Solidarity, re-opening to the "west" days of the early 1990s. Letters which painted an expectant and hopeful society, but bleak skies and an even bleaker infrastructure. I fully r

14 December 2025 I first found out about the European Masters SCM Championships in early September, saw the opportunity to visit Poland for the first time, and had no problem convincing my wife to make a long weekend of it, with a couple of days planned for racing in Lublin and then a couple of days for pure tourism in Warsaw. With Ryanair flying non-stop to Lublin, BA doing the same out of Warsaw, and the excellent and economical PKP Intercity train service between the tw

16 November 2026 I like to race at least once a month, whether I'm ready for it or not. Much as I do enjoy training, racing is a treat, racing is the reward. Racing, whether the result is good or bad, is always an unalloyed good. So, I enter events ... almost always with some measure of ambition ... and then I deal with the body that shows up on the blocks and see what happens. I entered the Charlie Lane Semi-Serious meet in Etobicoke days after finishing the Swim England

25-26th October 2025 I can't recall when I first learned about the Pond Forge International Sports Centre , but I've been wanting to compete here, or at least train here, since before I moved to England a couple of years ago. Some of my late 1980s University of Texas teammates raced here at the event the pool was built for, the 1991 World University Games, but I was completely off the grid living in rural Eswatini (now Swaziland) then, so I think this facility more likely ca