11 April 2026 I decided to really put my heart through its paces on Saturday, starting off with a 2,600 meter workout with my Masters team at the Barnet Copthall pool ... ... which featured a warmup set of 16 x 25 (where I started to ramp up the heart rate) before a main set of 9 x 100, 3 each on 1:35, 1:30, 1:25 where I held mostly 1:13/14s through the first six and then descended down to 1:08 on the last three. I then had enough time to have a great, if a bit abbreviated,

7 April 2026 After our (mis-)adventures in Madrid and with Canadian Masters Nationals a mere seven weeks away, today marked the start of a focused six-week training and one-week drop taper cycle to try to see if I can get back into any semblance of racing shape to at least be able to deliver a somewhat decent 200 freestyle result. I arrived at the London Aquatics Centre to brilliant sunshine and evidence that there was a lot of fun happening here over the Easter long weekend

5 April 2026 Bella and I have locked into our top five features for our travel perfection: Fitness first – pools for me and great gyms for her Food next – we aim to eat our way around locations, going in for local over global, flavour over fullness (though sometimes we indulge with filling local flavour!) Walk ing, walking, walking – we walk A LOT with history/city walking tours and food walking tours booked whenever possible.  This both serves goal #1 and is the best wa

3 April 2026 While the swim/workout and the pool itself are the primary goals behind all of my pool tourism, a very close third place is the journey to and from the pool. Particularly when I'm in a new city, I view the travel as part of the challenge ... and the delight. It can also be humbling ... but in a growth-oriented way. We arrived into Madrid on Thursday late afternoon and I was smugly confident in my ability to navigate the Metro from the airport to our hotel. Mad

25 March 2026 Mainz, Germany really is a wonderful city, nestled on the south side of the Rhine River, due south of Weisbaden and southwest of Frankfurt, this burg of about 225,000 people has everything I need for a productive business trip: an easily accessible main train station with decent hotels and reasonably priced (but good) restaurants in walking distance and two great public pools. Until today, I've always swum at the Taubertsberg Bad as it's an easy 5-10 minute wal

22 March 2026 The organisers of the (gala name aside) excellent " Derbyshire Open Masters Championships" missed a brilliant branding opportunity to name this the "2026 Swimming Derby in Derby." Held at the most(ly) excellent Moorways Sports Village (now pool 779)... (click to enlarge pictures) ... this one day event afforded me the opportunity to finally get in my first racing of 2026, and to have a bit of a short weekend getaway with my wife. Thanks to a couple of health "

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