2008 Halton Open Sprint Meet

Halton is in Widnes and to celebrate there 10th anniversary they held their first Masters meet and invited swimmers from their twinned towns (in the Czech Republic, Germany and Portugal). So this was my first "international" meeting. The one problem with this meet was that it was the first week back after the summer break - so speedie swimming (for me) was probably off the agenda. That said it was a really good event, and it was nice to chat with people from other countries.

I entered the maximum of five events, and some how got encouraged to enter 50M breaststroke. That was a laugh, because the lady I spoke to on the phone about that "helped" me pick an entry time of 36s, that seemed okay to me at the time (what do I know?) but it made me the fastest seed in my heat (er no...) and who came last...? Still 38.49 was pretty good for me

Of the events I enjoyed (for that read swam better) in the afternoon. I think the reason for that was that in the morning it wasn't easy to warm-up properly. Whilst the pool was eight lanes wide it was just bedlam. Now the afternoon was much better, probably because I had a good 20-25 minutes with a lane to myself, and that let me stretch my calf and leg muscles into a bit better shape.