Applications are now open for the new timetable!

Dear Swimmers

Hope you've all had a great week. The heat exhaustion that I felt at the start of the week has unfortunately turned into a touch of tonsilitis (would you believe it?!). Two words:

"SOFT POM"

...OK, enough of that. A couple of quick notices first then:

1. There will be no squad swim session on Saturday at 1pm due to the Busselton Ironman and the Rottnest Swim Thru both taking place. Apologies for any inconvenience here, but I figured most of you would be involved in some capacity in either of these two events. We'll resume Saturdays at 1pm next week (11th December) at the newly opened Claremont Pool. See you then. I won't be at Rotto as previously planned as I'll take the weekend to shake off this sore throat for a good (loud) return to Claremont next week!
2. We are going to keep the squad going pretty much right over Christmas for those of you to keep up your fitness for the Rottnest Channel Swim in particular. We'll be having swimming as normal right up until Christmas Eve, take the 25th, 26th, 27th and 28th off and then resume on the 29th, 30th and 31st December. Saturday 1st January will also be cancelled, but then we'll resume on Monday 3rd January to take us into the New Year. Hope that all sounds appealing! I'll remind you all of this closer to the date.

So, onto the decisions about Claremont Pool based on the email that came through yesterday - thanks so much for your input and understanding, it was a real help. The feedback seemed to be fairly unanimous in that most of you wanted to go back to Claremont and were happy to make adjustments to the Friday morning from Thursday. Here's more:

1. It has been decided that we will move ALL the sessions back to the Claremont Pool as of Monday 6th December, i.e. next week. Wahoo!
2. Thursday's early morning sessions at 5.30am and 6.30am will be moved to Friday as they were originally at this location. I apologise for the inconvenience that this may cause some of you, but despite me having that all locked away since May and confirmed, it seems that we have to run this session on a Friday. I hope you can all still make this "Fresh and Fruity Friday" in the new pool with the awesome new diving blocks (hint, hint...I might just teach you all how to dive over the next few months!)
3. Wednesday's 5.30am session will recommence as of next week (8th December) so please be sure to nominate for that if you wish to attend. It's a great session. We'll start off with a little land-based stretching (~10mins) and be in the water then for ~1h20. You can of course get out after 1hr if you so wish. I have put in a request to the pool for us to extend this session to 7.30am and thus make for a 2hr session for you SOLO swimmers if you're keen. My concern for the soloists is doubling up in the Tuesday / Friday sessions with only 3 lanes will leave us tight on space, so if we can offer this long session on the Wednesday and then the long sessions on a Saturday (pool) and Sunday (open water) this will be more than OK. If you just want to develop your endurance as well, this is a great session, so don't think you have to be an aspiring SOLO swimmer to attend!
4. Subject to your interest in the new Monday 7am technique swim and the Tuesday 6.30pm session, we should be starting these on the 3rd and 4th of January 2011 respectively. Again, please ensure you nominate for these sessions if you wish to attend.

So, without further ado, now please take 2 or 3 minutes to let us know which sessions from the new timetable at http://www.swimsmooth.com/perth_claremontreopening.html you wish to nominate for by selecting the sessions carefully from the list. There is also space here to give us some feedback about the sessions and what you want to see improving / adding going forwards. I will do my very best to slot you all in for your preferred sessions, but please note that there is heavy demand for the 5.30am sessions on a Tuesday and Friday morning and we will honour spots here for those who have been most consistent in these sessions over the previous two seasons with the squad. I'll keep you posted once all the data is in. If you could try and get this back to me today that'd be really, really helpful! For those of you who are itching to get to one of the earlier sessions, the 5.30am Wednesday session might be a good place to start for example.

Hope it all looks OK for everyone and that you're as pumped as I am about getting back down to Claremont!

Cheers

Paul