GregInTheWater
GLASGOW OPEN WATER SWIMMING COACH
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The national day for Australia is celebrated on 26 January. Unlike other countries this was not the date that the long-suffering populace ousted the dictator/monarchy/foreign invaders. Rather it was the date in 1788 when a fleet of convict ships arrived in Sydney Cove after a long voyage from the UK, to start a penal colony called New South Wales. It was not until 1901 that the various colonies on the continent of… Read More
The middle of November has arrived. The Jacaranda trees have been in bloom for a month or so due to the early start of the summer. Huge bushfires have raged for weeks outside the city destroying hundreds of homes, making their presence felt with the pall of their smoke. That means it must be time for the start of the open water swimming season again in Sydney. After the hottest September… Read More
Here is a copy of a talk I gave on Wednesday 2 October 2013 as part of a swimming yarns program. There were nine speakers, and I was fortunate enough to be one of them. The night raised money for cancer research, and was held at the Woolloomoolo Bay Hotel in Sydney. It was a fantastic evening with some great yarns told around the theme of my first time. THE FIRST TIME… Read More
I was full of anticipation to do my 50th ocean swim race at the beach I grew up on at Caves Beach just south of Newcastle 150km north of Sydney. But the weather gods have interfered and the swim has been postponed until 10 March, when it will clash with the Sydney Harbour Classic at the Opera House. The weather pushed in a strong southerly breeze, and a nice 2m swell from… Read More
So the 2012 season is now over. What was my progress over the season? Well to recap in 2011 I had competed in six races with a total distance of 13.4 kms, and I struggled to finish some of those races. For distance covered in Australia I was ranked 1,398 out of 43,462 and in NSW 509th out of 17,154. For the oceanswim handicap series in 2011 I did three swims for… Read More
Australia Day on January 26 is the day of the Sydney Harbour swim at the Opera House. Unlike previous swims I could not enter both races on the day as the 2.2 km race was scheduled to start shortly after the one km race, making it impossible to do both. So I only entered the longer swim. There was only a few from my squad doing this race, as they were saving… Read More
After my trip to New York, I headed back to the squad to keep up the training. I was still in the second fastest lane, but I was slowly moving up the swimming order within the lane. I was finding that I was making more of the time repeats in the lane. That told me I was getting stronger and faster in the water. I had managed to swim over fifty km… Read More
Now that I had joined a squad, I quickly increased my training distances. I was now doing around thirty km in the pool per month which was about double what I had been doing previously. In addition to the increased distance, I was also getting fitter with faster laps and repetitions with the squad. I was also enjoying pushing myself in the pool and trying to understand the instructions from the coach…. Read More
I had mapped out a plan for swims for the season, and the one at the Opera House on Australia Day was on the list. I was familiar with the course, and it was a harbour swim which suited my confidence levels. The swim was scheduled to be two and a half km so it would test my fitness. When I arrived at Circular Quay I was greeted with a fog that… Read More
After my return from Europe I needed to find a new training pool. I went to the North Sydney pool about a 10 minute walk from where I was living. This pool has the record of being the pool that has had the most number of world records set in it. It was the pool where the Australian titles were held in during the 1950s and 1960s when people like Dawn Fraser,… Read More
GregInTheWater 