Update on Squad List

Dear TEAM

Apologies for the recent profusion of updates regarding the Squad - I sincerely appreciate your time and feedback in this regard in order to continue to make this a great squad in which to train.

As promised, I have produced a revised version of the Squad List. That can be seen here: http://theteamcore.com/images/Confirmed_Squad_List.pdf - please take a moment to scan your details and let me know if they are correct. If I have highlighted your name in the dusty-red colour, this simply means that I'd like you to confirm your place in that particular session due to some duplicates in the system or if we haven't seen you for a while.

On the PAYG front - I had an overwhelming response requesting this payment system to be kept "as is". I'm personally very happy about this as I too feel that it works well and offers you all the flexibility and value that training with a squad should entail. Stuart Murray kindly put forward a proposition about me holding onto everyone's cards so that you don't have to remember them and then email you when your card has expired. This is sound in practice but offers two hurdles: a) loss of "ownership" of the card, i.e. knowing immediately where you're at with payments etc; b) a huge amount of administration work for myself with a squad now in excess of 200 people. However, whilst this current system is not geared up for that, I shall be investigating some sort of unique card swipe system similar to the pool's reception and will keep you posted in due course - so thanks Stuart for your feedback!

If you look at the Squad List, it appears that our major concern at this time is the Friday 5.30am session. It's good to see so much interest in what is characteristically the hardest session of the week! Obviously, Rottnest is this weekend and as such numbers may calm down a little after this point. I have had to place some of the more recent additions to the squad on the Reserve List here, but would request that if you are on this list and can make it this Friday given the shortened session, the additional stretching and the fact that you'd probably worked it already into your itinerary, then please do so. Remember, we always have 4 lanes at 6.30am, so if this works better for any of you 5.30am crew, please let me know and we can do some more shuffling.

Finally, Thursday's 6.00am session this week at Cottesloe Beach will be the final open water session of the season at this day / time due to fading light - if you've not tried one yet, you should! Further details to follow about a replacement session which might ease congestion on a Friday morning. Also, the Saturday 1.00pm session over the last few weeks has really started to drop-off and we'd request your attendance there if you can make it (except for this Saturday of course!). I love running this session and wish to continue doing so, but this may be one for the winter months if it clashes with too many people's summer Saturdays. Let me know your thoughts if you have any on this matter.

Thanks again for your time! Now onto some carbo-loading for the weekend!!

Paul