4 May 2026 I asked ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini to describe Luton in three words. I got: Gritty. Transient. Unvarnished Industrial. Diverse. Connected. Gritty, underrated, unpretentious. I’ll take Underrated and Unpretentious (props to Anthropic) but, based upon only visiting the 2012-era, 8-lane, 50-meter, all deep competition pool at the Inspire: Luton Sports Village, I would add LOVELY. I have had this pool on my “London Pool Bucket List” for awhile, but it’s just far enough

25 April 2026 When I was mapping out my ambitious return to racing during my "dry days" in January and February, I found a perfect pair of bookend competitions to an "events as high quality workouts" period, with lineups as mirror-images: March 21st's Derbyshire Open Masters Championships April 25th's Bracknell-Wokingham Swim Club's National Qualifier meet Five weeks apart, both in a long course pool without a separate warmup/cool-down pool (for maximum lactate-joy), and both

18 April 2026 Just like last weekend , I lined up a full "Swimming Saturday" ... 3,200 meter morning Barnet Copthall masters team workout Gargantuan chicken caesar salad at the Silver Service Cafe for our team breakfast/brunch ... and then, starting from the end of the Northern Line at Mill Hill East, a tube, train and bus to head out to Swindon's Link Centre for an afternoon of racing This massive, if dated, facility has come to closest to reminding me of a Canadian commun

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

31 March 2026 As I wrapped up my 5,900 total meters in my second pool of the day to celebrate my birthday ... and then reflected on text messages with my swimming-father who was about to celebrate his 83rd birthday and who was resisting swimming my "gift" to him of a very creative 2,075-meter workout (e.g., 83 x 25) ... I came to the conclusion that I need to develop "Swimming Rule of 60" to guide future birthday swimming celebrations, completely stealing the idea from famous

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 "