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,

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 "

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

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

12 October 2025 I am no expert on the intersection of the British school system with elite sports performance, but I have learned enough from living here almost two years to know that Millfield Prepatory School has an impressive aquatic pedigree.  When I saw an afternoon meet pop on the Swimming England Masters calendar, the Southwest Region Open Meet, I knew I had to make the trip.   It did not disappoint.  This facility, dedicated in 1995, has a reverential air, from the v

9 August 2025 After I finished my first 400 LCM free of 2025, back at the K2 Crawley meet in mid-January , I wrote ... I still think I...

15 June 2025 But, first, a word of thanks to our sponsors for a most excellent weekend of racing: I don't know what it costs for the...