Grand Central SHockport - Race Report from Pool #810

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 the early 1990s, has been on my bucket list for awhile. The original vision for the complex - which included a multiplex cinema, bowling alley, restaurants, nightclubs, arcade, the pool and health club - shares some swimming similarity with the late 1980s Justus Aquatic Center (now the Rosen Aquatic & Fitness Center) in that both facilities had as an anchor a world-class (at the time) long course pool with the vision for using the pool as both an elite training center and venue for competitions.

The Grand Central pool has been home to the Stockport Metro Swimming Club, a perennial powerhouse for producing elite swimmers ...

.... and was, from 2008 until 2013, one of five British Swimming Intensive Training Centres. Funding was cut to Stockport for this purpose after the 2012 Olympics.

I didn't focus too much on the female records, but I'd posit Stockport Metro's record boards as one of the toughest club record boards in the world for young guys trying to make a name for themselves:

When your club records feature World Championship and Commonwealth Games host cities, you know you have your work cut out for you. I imagine if there had been North Baltimore Aquatic Club record board still lingering around the Meadowbrook pool, that would've been even faster ... but these are damn impressive times.

Maybe there's something in the water, but I was pretty impressed with my own times in this short evening session, which kicked off with a 5:30pm warmup and a 6:00pm start. I swam three events in about 75 minutes.

50 Back

• Masters Best – 30.01 (2013, age 46)

• 50+ Best – 31.04 (December 2022, IM Fast)

• Result – 31.28

• Reaction -

  • Historically, I don't do this race often; this is only the 10th time I have swum it over the last 26 years as a Masters swimmer. And I only entered this as a warmup race for my 400 IM. But, it was still my fourth best performance ever (30.01, 31.04, 31.24 being the faster times). And, I did practically everything wrong.

  • They didn't have backstroke wedges, so my already piss-poor start was worse than ever.

  • The one confounding "bug" (definitely not a feature) of this pool is that the bulkhead wall is just solid grey with no cross on it, so it was very disorienting on the turn and I flipped too far from the wall, getting almost no pushoff.

  • Then, I also miscounted and glided into the finish.

  • The actual swimming part felt good.

400 IM

• Masters Best – 4:46.48 (2013, age 46)

• 50+ Best – 5:02.05 (November 2017, age 50)

• Result – 5:01.92

• Reaction -

  • I was shocked with the time on the clock. I have been hovering at 5:02-low at my taper meets in 2022 (5:02.33) and 2025 (5:02.46), but ranged from 5:06.48 to 5:14.04 at "in-season" meets since moving to the UK. It certainly didn't feel that fast.

  • I swam this with my usual strategy - try to sleep through the fly, and then try to negative split each other stroke. I felt strong through the backstroke, but was gassed enough that I couldn't do an underwater pullout (the best part of my breaststroke) off that back-to-breast bucket turn. I managed to do abbreviated pullouts for the rest of the 100, but was struggling mightily. By the time I got to the freestyle, I was breathing left, right and center, had almost zero leg power and felt like I thrashed the whole last 100. The splits don't look as bad as it felt ...

  • 

  • ... but this was a very encouraging result. Until I turned 50, going sub-5:00 was a routine outing for me (e.g., I was 4:52.09 at age 49) and I still have a dream I can get back under. To swim this time without any taper and a relatively short focused training period since Canadian Nationals gives me a lot of confidence I can do so.

  • Speaking of Canada, technically I lowered my own 55-59 Canadian Masters National record with this swim (vs my 5:02.33 from 2022) and I was also well under the British record of 5:07.81 for this age group. But, since I'm not British, I can't hold their record ... and since I wasn't competing for my Canadian team, I can't apply for this to be considered back there.

  • I'm going to need to do some strategizing as to what meets I swim and which club I'm registered with next year when I age up to 60-64.

50 fly

• Masters Best – 27.62 (2010, age 43)

• 50+ Best – 28.69 (November 2017, age 50)

• Result – 28.90

• Reaction -

  • This is a race I swim far more often, this being the 19th time in my masters career and my time being 7th faster ever and 3rd fastest "Age 50+" swim. Of my three swims, this was the best executed and it was great to dip under 29.

A few parting thoughts in no particular order:

• I have never come across a pool more convenient to a train station than this one - literally a three minute walk. Given the bonus of the Avanti West Coast train, one of the most comfortable coaches in my experience, servicing Stockport from London's Euston station means I'll gladly make the two-ish hour journey to race here again.

• What my results are showing me is that my training approach of late - far more focused on fast. high-quality versus volume - is paying off. I also feel that my attention to technique on the fly (I'm trying to envision Gretchen Walsh's entry with Summer McIntosh's under pull as my 'platonic ideal' of a butterfly stroke) is working.

• With that said, racing the 400 IM long course at European Masters in about five weeks will be a whole different beast, so I will start to amp up the distance of my fast repeats from 50s to 100s.