Race Report: From Woking Warmup (#790) to Action in Aldershot (#791)

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 featuring a lineup that allowed me to do the same events (400 free, 50 back, 200 IM), albeit with the second meet the reverse of the first.

For this Saturday's racing, there was a bonus: my journey from London's Waterloo station to Aldershot required me to change trains in Woking ... so I obviously found Woking's 50+ year old "Pool in the Park" a gentle and bucolic, 15-minute stroll from the Woking station and used this old, but functional pool as the site of my first warmup:

Pool #790 - Woking's Pool in the Park

The pool itself, a six-lane, 25 meter tank shows its age, but has a nice depth, with much of the pool from 3.0 sloping to 1.5M before graduating to only a short bit at 1.1M. The setup this Saturday morning would not have been conducive to a real workout, as they only had two lanes for lane/fitness swimming, but it met my needs for 1,500 meters including twenty fast 25s mixed across underwater SDK, fly and free … and even got in four pace 50s free, magically timed when the other 5 swimmers lined up perfectly for me to not run them over!

After an even more pleasant walk back to the Woking station (as the sun had warmed the envions up nicely) and a fine flat white at the trackside FCB Coffee, I was on my way to the town of Aldershot, site of the large military installation, the Aldershot Garrison, that was our event site for the day. What I also learned, as I walked from the station to Union Yards to catch the bus out to the garrison, is that Aldershot is colloquially (and, I think, affectionately) known as "Little Nepal" or "Little Kathmandu."

The only bummer about this realization is that my mouth was watering as I passed multiple momo restaurants, but they're not exactly "pre-race" performance food and I had dinner plans back in London after the meet (so I couldn't sample them). I first discovered momos when in Goa, India back in 2003, but then got my fill of them when I was in Nepal in 2017 (and, of course, swam).

But, onto the event, the site of which greeted me with a cool, mirror-image entry sign (thanks to the perfectly bluebird, sunny day) and the reminder that I was at an active military base:

... but what was more exciting was this stunning, eight-lane, 50-meter pool with the depth at a constant 2.0M for about 35 meters before plunging to 3.8M in the foreground of the picture below (to support the diving platforms just out of the picture on the right in the same picture).

Pool #791 - Aldershot Garrison Sports Centre

My goals coming into the meet were simple: see if and how much I could improve versus the same events done at Derby. Here's how it played out:

• 400 free - 4:46.51 vs

  • 4:56.99 at Derby this March

  • 4:27.99 Masters best from 2012

  • 4:39.55 Masters best from August 2025

  • Under the 4:49.28 I had done at the start of 2025

• 50 back - 34.76 vs. a

  • 35.40 at Derby this March

  • 31.91 Masters best from 2014

  • 33.63 2025 best

• 200 IM - 2:38.36 vs

  • 2:41.88 at Derby this March

  • 2:22.62 Masters best from 2012

  • 2:33.37 2025 best

While I was happy with all results, I was most happy with my splitting in my 400 ...

... as I really haven't had enough time to put in any substantial aerobic work recently, but showed that my ~50 years of distance-training haven't left me. With now only four weeks until I race at Canadian Masters Nationals, this gives me some measure of confidence that I can focus on race pace speed for my 200 ... and that my 400 will be just fine.

To top off a great day, I finished with plenty of time to get somewhat dressed up to head back to London to meet my wife and her friend visiting from Canada for a great meal at Poon's at Somerset House (get their prix-fixe pre-dinner set menu) and then an even better time at the London Coliseum for ...