Race & Pool Report: Cranking in Coventry (#726 & #727)

8 March 2025

I headed up Saturday morning to Coventry* to race at the West Midlands Masters Championships. Naturally, the pool tourist in me couldn't help but notice that The Wave Waterpark was only a 5 minute walk from the Coventry Station and that they have a basic 4 lane, 25-meter pool always setup for lap swimming:

So, I arranged to arrive a little after their 9am opening so that the racer in me could also be prepared by having the longer warmup time that I need to get going. I did variants of my standard 1,750 meter warmup sets, managing to have the fast lane all to myself for most of this. Pool #726 wasn't anything particularly special, but it more than served its purpose for getting me ready to race.

After taking the rather luxurious local 21 bus from the center of town about 20 minutes to the southwest, I had a 10-15 minute walk along the edge of Allard Way Park before I arrived at the massive sportsplex, The Alan Higgs Centre, the centrepiece (for me) of which is a beautiful eight lane, 50 metre pool which they had carved up into a competition end and a continuous warmup/cool-down end:

I had a big mid-day session of racing planned, which I did consciously knowing that I'd have access to the cool-down pool between races. I got in another 550 meters during the warmup session (200 IM kick-drill, 4 x 50 target race pace, 4 x 25 fast from the blocks, 50 easy) and did a recovery set of 8 x 50 after both the 800 and the 200 breaststroke. Everything about the meet operations ran like clockwork and was setup to allow swimmers to perform well - lots of deck space plus stands upstairs, the aforementioned second "pool," and just enough swimmers to make it competitive, but not so many that it dragged on. Here's how things went:

800 free

• Masters Best – 8:57.63 (2011, age 44)

• 50+ Best – 9:27.34 (2023, age 56)

• UK Best – 9:28.24 (Guernsey, April 2024)

• Result – 9:23.19

• Reaction – I really wanted this to be my best event of the day and it was.  I had a race strategy which consisted of varying my stroke count (measured as Strokes Per Length, SPL) going 100 at 12 SPL, 200 at 13 SPL, 200 at 14 SPL, 200 at 15 SPL and then just let it all go on the last 100. I executed this perfectly with 200 splits as 2:19.71, 2:22.45, 2:21.60, 2:19.43 (so a slight negative split) and felt like I had just the right amount of "juice" in the tank at the end. And, while I did swim this event consistently faster in my early 40s, when I swam this the very first time as a Masters Swimmer way back in 2001, I had gone 9:25.16.

200 Breast

• Masters Best – 2:43.35 (2014, age 47)

• 50+ Best – 2:43.70 (2017, age 50)

• UK Best – 2:54.27 (Maidenhead, September 2024)

• Result – 2:47.90

• Reaction – This race started right about an hour after I started my 800 free, so I swam it controlled with long pullouts through the 125 and then tried to build the last 75. Like the 800, I felt like my pacing / strategy was bang on and my splits held up pretty well - 38.35, 42.62, 43.67, 43.16. I was, quite frankly, stunned with the time as I still haven't been practicing much breaststroke. When I swam almost my best time back in 2017, I had dedicated a SCM season to really focus on breaststroke So, this was a great result for me.

400 Free

• Masters Best – 4:19.70 (2005, age 38)

• 50+ Best – 4:28.43 (2022, age 55)

• UK Best – 4:32.12 (Birmingham, March 2024)

• Result – 4:32.82

• Reaction – After the 200 breaststroke, I had a little more than an hour before this race. In that time, I played around with ChatGPT, feeding it my splits from the 800 and the stroke count strategy I had employed. I worked iteratively to get a recommendation for a sub-4:30 race strategy, based upon my stroke count, which included recommendations on both breathing pattern and legs. I was pretty damn impressed with its analyses** and its recommendations. Alas, while I'm still quite happy with the swim, I was a bit knackered and couldn't quite deliver on the strategy. Still, I split this well ...

  

  ... this was a little faster than I had gone in Basingstoke in December 2024, and ChatGPT was happy with it!

Another great day of racing with two more additions to my pool list!

* Northern Line to Euston, Avanti West Coast train non-stop to Coventry, 21 local bus to the Alan Higgs Centre: a super-smooth journey

** If anyone really wants to geek out on GenAI applied to swimming, I'd be happy to share the chat transcript.