A Swimming Derby in Derby (Pool #778)

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 "blips" (one referenced here and one to still be fully processed and possibly written about), I have spent more time not swimming this year than swimming. By the end of Q1 2026, I'll probably have swum a total of about 50KM over only 24 days in the water, versus my more typical 200KM done in 60-65 days of swimming. I went to the meet with absolutely zero intention of fully racing my events; I just wanted to get on the blocks and answer this question: just how far have I fallen over the last three months of miniscule training?

The answer can be framed as both:

• Farther than ever before: I recorded my slowest times ever as a Masters swimmer in my three events - 200 IM, 50 back and 400 free.

• But, also, not as far as I had thought!

My three races were in the first multi-event session after the early morning heats of the 1500. I loafed through 950 meters in warmup and then had about 20/25 minutes between the IM and the backstroke, then maybe 30/35 minutes before the 400 freestyle. Since I had focused so much of 2025 on my 400 freestyle, I held back on both the ...

• 200 IM - 2:41.88 vs a

  • 2:22.62 Masters best from 2012

  • 2:33.37 2025 best

  • 2:38.50 previous "Masters worst" from 2013

• 50 back - 35.40 vs. a

  • 31.91 Masters best from 2014

  • 33.63 2025 best

  • 33.94 previous "Masters worst" from 2014

... so I could use the 400 as a real benchmark swim.

For the 400, I was quite paranoid about utterlying dying, so my race plan was simple, again based upon my trusted pacing approach of using my stroke count/length as a way to control my pace at the start and feel strong at the end:

• 1st length - stretch out a long dive and getting into my breathing pattern of two breaths to the right (every two strokes), three strokes then 7 breaths (every two) to the left, three strokes then repeat. I held that pattern until the last length.

• 2nd length - count my strokes (was 31)

• For the next 200, the goal was to hold that same stroke count, which I did through the 250, but then was feeling powerful enough that I ramped up to 33 on the 6th length. 35 on the 7th length and then just stopped counting on the last 50.

• My 100 splits were 1:11.8, 1:16.1, 1:15.7, 1:13.0 ... which felt great, but probably also indicates that I didn't need to be quite so tentative.

This was strangely a morale boost as I was only seven seconds slower than I had been last January, in a time period when I was training very consistently. I have another long course meet in Bracknell on April 25th, where I've entered the same three events, albeit the order is reversed. The only sub-optimal part of both the Derby meet and the upcoming Bracknell meet is the lack of a separate warm-up and cool-down facility. That's fine enough for these in-season events ... and it's also a good note for me so that I don't plan to race at either of these facilities for "peak meets" in 2027 (when I'll have just aged up to 60).

The big added bonus to this weekend's racing was that I had enough hotel points to nab a free room Saturday night at the oldest hotel in Marriott's global portfolio, the Breadsall Priory ...

... a hotel that started life in the late 13th century for a group of Augustinian friars. After operating for a couple of centuries as such, Henry the VIII closed it as part of his "Dissolution of Monastries" and it was eventually turned into a private home. The most famous subsequent resident was Dr. Erasmus Darwin, a polymath physician-scientist himself and grandfather of Charles Darwin.

I can't say that the hotel inspires much scientific thinking these days, but it has an exceptional gym - amongst the best I have ever seen at a hotel - which my wife took advantage of while I swam. Judging by the smiles of the legion of golfers I saw on this brilliant sunny Sunday, I gather their golf course is rather good.

To top off a great weekend, when mapping my drive back from the pool to pickup my wife at the hotel, I noticed that Bluebell Dairy was right in the path and that it advertised itself as an "Ice Cream Farm." Fortunately, my wife was just as game as me to have "lunch" here ...