100% Success Rate For Swimmers!

Dear TEAM

That's quite a bold title for today's Blog, however, I am very pleased to announce that 100% of those of you who re-tested your 1000m swim Time Trial from the middle of July have (in two months) all improved! This is a great result - well done! Consistency and dedication on those cold mornings has clearly paid off!

Here are some more stats for those of you who like numbers:

• A total of 89 swimmers from the squad have now tested themselves over the 1000m distance in the past two months. This is ~50% of the squad membership.
• 36 swimmers were tested on 13th July 2010 - view all the results at: http://www.theteamcore.com/images/1km_TT_13_07_10.pdf
• 68 swimmers were tested on the 14th September 2010 - view all the results at: http://www.theteamcore.com/images/1km_TT_14_09_10.pdf
• 21 swimmers attended both test sessions and thus qualified to enter our winter "Biggest Loser" competition, whereby there was a 100% improvement across the group!
• The fastest recorded male time was by James Forbes in 13'27"
• The fastest recorded female time was by Ceinwen Williams in 13'47"
• The average pace of the squad is exactly 18'00" for the 1000m distance
• My predicted improvement (as a percentage) for those who re-tested and regularly swam 2-4 sessions per week for the 2 months was 3.0%
• The actual average improvement of the Biggest Loser group (as a percentage) was 3.9%
• The Biggest Loser was Silke Highet who improved by an astounding 2'57" in just two months - equivalent to 13.6%!! Well done Silke!! Silke wins a Swim Smooth waterproof Training Plan as per http://www.swimsmooth.com/trainingplans.html to keep her ticking over at times when she cannot attend the squad, e.g. school holidays etc.
• Also doing well for the guys was Andy Bolt with a 7.8% improvement!! Andy wins a copy of the Swim Smooth DVD Boxset (as seen at http://www.swimsmooth.com/DVD.html ) to help him refine his stroke even further!
• You can view all the Biggest Loser results at: http://www.theteamcore.com/images/Biggest_Loser_14_09_10.pdf

This (for me) has been a brilliant exercise and one which has prompted a lot of new ideas and sessions to be tested out within the squad in order to get your fitness up to a good level prior to the spring - so thanks for taking part if you did! Hope you enjoyed it - it'll definitely be back again next winter!

Going forwards from here, the annual Open Water Calendar has just been released (not available online yet, but you can pick up your own hard copy from the reception at Challenge Stadium) and as such I'm busily beavering away now on identifying a couple of the open water races over the season which I think would be really good to go and attend as a squad. Many of you have already expressed a bit of an interest in this. 

Also, there are numerous people now thinking about the Rottnest Channel Swim on the 26th February 2011. 20 members of the squad (me included) will be attempting the solo crossing this year, up from 13 in the previous two years. There is a lot of interest in people wanting to have a crack at the DUO or TEAM event who might not have done it before and wish to partner / team up with someone for this great event. If that's you, please drop me a quick email and we'll look at coordinating a few teams and probably organise a catch-up to discuss logistics etc. I think it will be really great if we can get a bit of a team thing happening this year, so I look forward to hearing from you!

Cheers and now let the summer roll on!

Paul