18 July 2026 I really, really wanted to love the new Canary Wharf Sea Lanes. Maia came up from Brighton to spend the weekend in London with us ... and the timing was pretty perfect as it was almost three years ago to the day (July 9, 2023) that we had swum together in the "OG" Sea Lanes pool down in Brighton. We booked our swim for 3pm and had absolutely perfect conditions, with fairly skies and the water chilled, but not too chilled. The location is less than a ten minute

11 July 2026 As Elton John sang ... "… It's getting late have you seen my mates Ma tell me when the boys get here It's seven o'clock and I want to rock ..." The boys (and girls) were out, but no bellies full of beer because Saturday night was allright for racing at the Life Leisure Grand Central pool in Stockport for the Cheshire County Masters SCM Championships: I cannot recall when I first learned of this pool, but the facility, dating to an urban regeneration project in th

30 June 2026 As I was planning our move to London in 2023 and started swimming around the town on visits that summer, I started to learn about English lido culture and began to hear about this apparently magical, 90-meter long unheated Tooting Bec Lido in south London, London's longest lido (and, I believe, second only to Cambridge's 91-meter / 100 yard length Jesus Green Lido in terms of longest pools in England). I did make it down to the indoor, 33-meter long Tooting Leisu

10 May 2026 I’ve been too busy with work and life while trying to squeeze swimming into the former to writeup my racing and the great 2022 Birmingham Commonwealth Games pool, the Sandwell Aquatics Centre, which became pool #794 on my #1001Pools list. I was up there on Sunday, May 10th, for their first ever Masters meet and, other than a brief episode after my 200 freestyle, had a great day. I always love swimming in a “games legacy” pool, having enjoyed swimming in: Multip

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,

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

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 "