24 January 2025
As I was cooling down in Lane 5 this morning, one of the two "fast" lanes during lane swimming sessions at the London Olympic Aquatic Centre, I thought back to the first time I swam here, in September 2014. I was on my way home from India on a business trip, taking the usual godawful early morning departures out of Delhi (2:20am), which then had me standing outside of the facility by 11am, feeling both wrecked from the flight and full of wonder at the facility:
I lived in Phoenix in those days and had arranged an overnight stay in London for three reasons:
Buy a lot of Cadbury chocolate for my wife
See family
Swim at the Olympic pool
The family all turned out to be out of town for a wedding ... which, of course, meant I got to do more of #3 after fulfilling husbandly #1 duties ... which was particularly good since I walked into the pool on that Saturday to find the main competition occupied with an event, relegating me to a few open lanes in the training pool during "family swim:"
I still managed 3,000 meters, but it wasn't really the experience I was really coming for.
Fortunately, showing up first thing as it opened on Sunday morning delivered a magical swim, where I had lane 5 all to myself for my entire workout and there were never more than 10 people swimming in the entire competition pool:
I wrote at the time ...
"I have had a lot of really cool swimming experiences and swum in some very cool pools, but this morning's swim in Lane 5 (all to myself) at the London 2012 pool, long course has to go down in the history books as one of the most special workouts of my life. Beyond the raw swimming significance and awesome history of this pool, I just found the architecture, the light, the water and the pool itself stunning."
Living here now, I (virtually) pinch myself every time I walk on the deck as the pool, the view, the architecture are still stunning.
As for this morning, thanks to me tarrying on my way out the door into the nasty Storm Éowyn and an issue beyond my control, I arrived on the pool deck about 30 minutes behind my target schedule. This meant, to get to work on time, I both had to cut about 500 meters off my standard long warmup and drop the 3rd round of the Hackett 200 Race Pace Test set.
I still had a good run, performing a bit better today than I did back in October when my added up 200 IMs ranged from 2:41.6 down to 2:34.3:
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