Make or break

There is now a lot of suspense in the air because Hackney Aquatics will shortly announce squad movements. It’s a very big deal for swimmers whether they get selected for the top Performance squad or the competition squad.

Makes a huge difference, some competitions can only be entered by performance squads. Madison has been in performance since several years now and doesn’t want anything else.

At the moment we are trying to get tougher. We are entering competitions mainly to increase stamina. Going to swim in

• Open Water
  • London Region, London
  • South East Region, Chichester
• Long distance swims
  • CWSC time-trial 12. July
  • Barking 800 13. July
• Sponsored Swim the Thames 5km in total

Some events we do not enter to win but just to condition.

We know where Madison can get good results but there are those events where the chances are not so good and those are the ones we will enter as well, e.g. 400 free, 400 IM. Winning medals is not always possible but taking part is.

Overall the consistently best swimmers in the long run are always the ones who have the best variety of strokes and distances.

As a special treat for after the summer break. during which Madison will keep busy by attending

• The Melanie Marshall SwimInspiration summer camp
• climbing and canoeing workshops
• perhaps a Hackney Aquatics summer camp

then in September onto the level 2 Cambridge Grand Prix 

and also Redbridge which is always a nice weekend to get some more County and Regional Times for next season.

Overall there is an excellent variety of competitions that Hackney Aquatics attends, which really enriches the life of any swimmer.

Excellent, good and not so good

As with all new schemes there are teething problems and we’ve heard that this new coaching scheme has been set up with very little time to actually do this.

Lisa Bates has left, people are wondering where she is because Lisa did not say good-bye; some kids were upset not to know what happened to Lisa and Alexander takes up a coaching the coaches post and promised to see us pool-side at some point, that is very good to know.

What I think is important to point out that the LAC Advanced Coaching Scheme is not a club in the classic sense but it is a coaching scheme. A training scheme directly supervised by Swim England.

The Coaching Scheme is administered by the UEL affiliated Newham Swimming club but Newham club members remain mainly Newham club members whilst swimmers have the option to join the LAC ACS full-time. Madison has become full-time last year, so the transition will just be that she changes membership from LACPP to LACACS.

I very much like the new training hours. PM training starts most days at 17:00 – 19:00, whilst there are now 4 weekly AM sessions. This choice of sessions is very important to any swimmer who has GCSE courses going on. There is also more sleeping hours between PM and AM sessions; important for the younger swimmers.

Of course the pool itself is a very good facility, very well cleaned and equipped with the latest technology; also there are now 2 days (Tuesdays and Thursdays) where the 50m lanes will be divided into 25m lanes with the same equipment that is used by Loughborough NTS.

There will be talent lanes, to discover all those talented swimmers who take Better swimming lessons and monthly sprint sessions to measure progress of swimmers in a fun setting.

The only negative point for us is a lack of competition schedule. At this moment in time, we have not been given any competitions to enter for next season. Thinking that most competitions are planned months in advance and entries usually have to be in at least 2 months prior to a competition, the LAC ACS must take this into consideration.

Really this cannot happen every year. The current scheme runs for 11 month, till the end of July 2018, I sincerely hope that next year, we will not have the same problem of a missing competition schedule again.

Obviously most national competitions are easy to enter as swimmers can enter them directly but all level 2, 3, 4 competitions have to be organised through the clubs. Since LAC ACS is not a club in the classical sense it has the weakness of not preparing competitions schedules on a continuous basis.

Hopefully the affiliation with Newham & NUEL swimming club will solve this problem. I was a great supporter of the LAC swimming club being run by a local club, it is after all located in the London Borough of Newham and it is most practical to run a club from an established well working local system.