2008 Yorkshire Open (Scarborough)

This last Saturday was the day of the Scarborough (Yorkshire) open Masters competition. It was a right scorching day and the swimming was good. As is my usual - if it's a long journey I book into a B&B the night before, this had the added advantage that I didn't need to pay for parking on the day. Scarborough pool is a 6 lane 25M pool, its one downside was the shallowness of the (well) shallow end - just 0.9M so it took a little while for me to adjust for flip turning!

Another thing that struck me was the size of some of the male swimmers - *big*. But size isn't everything, and I had to remind myself that my first event last year I was a touch intimidated by the size and quality of some of the swimmers. So I just calmed down and did my bit.

As is the way with these events, the people you sit with tend to be really nice people, and Saturday was no exception - I sat with a team from Wetherby and they were really nice, and it helped pass the time. Something else that was really good about this event was that it wasn't rushed. The morning session finished and they had an hour's break between it and the afternoon. This was really good, because Scarborough's a lovely town and I hopped off to the beach for half-an-hour and chilled with a cup of green tea from a shore side cafe... nice!

As to my swimming, well some was okay, some was poor and one bit unpleasantly scary. Probably the best swim was the 200M free, in the lane next to me was a lady some 10+ years my junior who'd entered a time just quicker than me. I think we both swam better than we would have done because of the presure. Alas she did beat me but that's because I didn't put the throttle down until the final length. I caught up quite a bit then, but she had longer finger nails and out touched me by 0.1s! But I was really pleased with the effort I put in on the last 25, it felt fast and my time recorder said it looked pretty good. As for the rest the 50M free was okay, I clocked 28.55 - it should have been sub-28 but I did the bad thing and took that extra breath (that I didn't need). What was annoying about that was I finished 5th where third was just 0.11 in front of me - I should have done better (must stop breathing!)

As for the rest, the fly was a bit hit and miss (more miss really) and the 100 IM/free were slow! In my defence the afternoon didn't start very well (other than the 200M because I tried to rip my right-hand ring finger off!) I got my ring caught in part of the housing of the blocks when practicing my dives and it felt like I was trying to rip my finger appart from the knocukle joint (very sickly feeling). So the afternoon session I was a touch gun-shy on my dives - not important on the 200M but would have been usefull on the shorter ones.

Anyway, it's over now and I had a good day, all things concidered: