Windsor Swimming Club Long Course Open Meet

While 127 PSC swimmers were racing in Dorchester at the West Dorset Meet, a smaller, but no less determined band of 19 athletes were en route to Aldershot for the rather civilised warmup time of 9am!

Windsor Swimming Club hosted an extremely well-organised meet and were very welcoming hosts. The events ran like clockwork and finished exactly on time, at a very swim-parent-friendly 4pm!

For many, this was their first time swimming at Aldershot and the diving depth of 4 metres at the finish end certainly caused some tactical examination of stroke count and race technique for many!
The depth of the water caused distortion of the T markings on the bottom of the pool and there were several incidents of glides into the turn and even heads hitting before hands on sprint finishes, despite the best efforts to adjust during warmup!

This didn’t stop our team performing in the medals tally though and PSC had already clocked up 26 Golds, 17 Silvers and 7 Bronze medals by the end of Saturday with a further 15 Golds, 11 Silvers & 7 Bronzes on Sunday leading to a grand total of 83 Medals over the two days!

Being long course and being so early in the season, PBs  and especially converted times for regional qualification were going to be a challenge, so the focus was on Long Course race process. However, that said, 63 races were PBs  with many more literally on Pb and of these, swimmers achieved 9 additional Regional Qualifying times plus another 5 Regional Considerations to a squad's already burgeoning tally of Regional times. Plenty of race attack was evident from all ages; changes of pace were attempted over the longer and shorter races and power into breakout, transition and strong finishes all culminated in a team who, it was clear, were not afraid to push through their comfort zones and attempt to find that bit extra.

The poolside camaraderie was evident throughout and the Dancing Amies deserve a special mention, as does Luca for his ambitious Parkour routine on Saturday night, which clearly has a little room for improvement :)

The ever-cool and unflappable Coach Phil certainly had his work cut out as lead (and only) coach as well as valiantly performing Team Manager duties for the entire crew. Phil stayed on for the whole weekend, despite his own son being ill with flu and having to pull out from the meet! Phil barely stopped to breath as he was seen demonstrating technique advice, giving last-minute top tips and race feedback, while simultaneously timing others in the pool! The parents and swimmers are all very grateful for his relentless enthusiasm and support in this first long course meet of the season. Many swimmers swam PBs and gained Regional Qualifying times, but there was also much to take away from the two days in terms of race tactics and long course strategies. Each and every swimmer received amazing individualised feedback.

Hopefully this will bode well as we head into the new year and the start of the official long course season.