Contents
Introduction
County Masters Records Tumble
County Masters Championships
Recent Achievements
Beds Masters Decathlon Challenge 2012 - Progress
Masters view of Inspire Luton Sports Village Competition Pool

Introduction
October has been an eventful month so we have produced another newsletter. It contains some reports which are the views of individual swimmers and Beds ASA bears no responsibility for their accuracy.

If you or your club has done something of note, please let us know and we will include it in the next issue.

County Masters Records Tumble
Keith Spence (South Beds Masters) our Records Keeper has been busy revising the Beds Masters Records, which are online at: http://www.bedscountyasa.com/ . See bottom of "Swimming Records" page below other county records.
During 2012 there has been a steady flow of new records, with more than ninety five individual records and eleven team relay records up to 28th September, so keep them coming. Claim forms are online and can be emailed to Keith.

County Masters Championships
At the County Masters Championships at Newmarket on the 6^th October.12, eighteen Bedfordshire Masters competed. Pat Reynolds of Beaver Masters Bedford broke the East Region 400M Freestyle record in a time of 6.11.10 in the 60/64 Age-group.

Channel Swim Completed

Congratulations to Ian for completing his channel swim in just over thirteen hours, which you may have seen reported on the BBC Look East local news television programme. Ian (53) now swims for Modernians, although for many years he swam with Lewsey Centre SC and Luton Swimming Club.

Ian is a Police Sergeant based in the Bedford area and made the swim for the charity Help For Heroes.

Ian started in the early hours, in calm seas, at Dover on a Sunday morning and finished 13 hours and seven minutes later on French rocks. The early start was necessary to avoid the strong currents in the channel. But even so, Ian had to swim against them at the later stages as he neared the French coast. Other hazards he faced were the jellyfish and the busy shipping lanes with giant tankers, which created large waves and made swimming difficult. He also had to tread water for what seemed a long time to let them go by safely.

He told Look East that for the last four miles his shoulders were aching badly, but he managed to keep going.

Ian had prepared for the challenge for many months in open water venues such as Priory Lake in Bedford, Box End in Kempston and had also made a charity swim in the River Ouse at the Bedford River Festival (see photo).

Ian at Bedford River Festival

Ian is hoping to raise £10,000 for Help For Heroes. You can show your support for Ian by giving a donation to Help For Heroes at www.bmycharity.com/stuffistoughton

A Transplant Games Medal

While we were all absorbed in the Paralympics in London, Team Luton swimmer, courier company director and the father-of-two, Ian Norman was in action and won four gold and two silver medals at the European Transplant Games in Croatia.

Ian qualified for Team UK at the European Transplant Games after he won medals at the British Games. Since his successes, he has been selected for the GB Team to go to the World Games next year in Durban, South Africa.

Ian was only 23 when he found out after medical testing, that his kidneys were failing. He battled against kidney failure for more than three years on dialysis machines while waiting for a replacement kidney to become available. Then about ten years ago, he underwent transplant surgery. Two years after surgery he felt fit enough to enter his first transplant games. He now qualifies for, and enters the games regularly.

He described his visit to Croatia as "very hot", but this does not seem to have affected his results. He won his medals for swimming freestyle and backstroke.

Ian feels that the Transplant Games are overlooked by the British sports funding bodies and the media who give much more support to the Paralympics. He comments that "we are expected to fund ourselves and do everything by ourselves".

3) Lawrence Palmer 50M Breaststroke
While it does not count as a Masters/Seniors record because it was not swum in a Masters competition, Lawrence's 50M Breaststroke time of 28.71 at the recent Team Luton Short Course Championships on the 8^th of September is quite remarkable (to me at least). There's many a freestyler who would be thrilled to get near that.

It is close to the British Seniors SC Record of Chris Tidey of City of Cambridge at 28.14 set at Sheffield on 30 October 2004.

Beds Masters Decathlon Challenge 2012 - Progress
We are about three quarters of the way through the season and the top five rankings are like this, (national position in brackets) on 9^th October 2012:

Followed byAndrea Minor of S. Beds 2282 and Louise Jarvis of Biggleswade 2155

Followed by Chris Jessup of S. Beds 2347 and David Wright of Team Luton 2344

Christine Ayers is still romping away to becoming ladies Decathlon Champ and Janet Masters is also in the national top 50.

In the Men's, Marcel Scholten has leapt into a leading position with a few quality swims that earned high points for seven swims. He is closely followed by club mate Dave Cartledge who also has three events in hand and these two will be hard to beat.

Masters view of Inspire Luton Sports Village Competition Pool
These are my personal views and observations from the point of view of a Masters swimmer and cover how I think the pool will cater for Masters swimming, training, use in public lane sessions and competitions. They are not intended for other purposes.

There are eight lanes. In public sessions four have lane ropes for lane swimming. The other four lanes are for general splash-about use.

The depth of water appears to be 2 Metres throughout. When high diving is active, that end is lowered to a depth of 5 Metres.

The water is at an even temperature throughout the pool. It is at a good training temperature.

The blocks are of the new type with adjustable rear ramps to help "race starts", which are angled like sprinters blocks, but for the rear foot only. Watching the Olympics it is surprising how few swimmers actually remember to adjust this type of block to their size or leg length.

There are no halfway marks on the pool floor to help swimmers pacing, although there are some feint marks that are not easy to remember. They appear to be at 15M, 20M and 25M from the shallow end and 20M, 25M, 30M and 35M from the deep (diving) end.

There are two timing clocks at the shallow end, one for the right four lanes and one for the left four lanes. These are very difficult to see from the water because of back-lighting from adjacent windows and floodlights.

The Electronic notice board is positioned halfway along the poolside. I assume this is where results will be displayed. In public sessions it shows the time of day among other things.

There is no poolside "wet" seating, just a few benches and single seating on the "air vent" walls around the sides. This is similar to other pools such as K2. There is adequate "dry" seating for spectators upstairs, which is not directly accessible from poolside.

The lockers are non-refundable, which makes them unsuitable for use during a Masters gala where swimmers need access to their locker many times during a day.

In public sessions, the pool is configured to 50M from 6am to 8.30am on weekdays and 8am to 10am on Saturdays and 8am to 12 noon on Sundays, when it can get very busy with club swimmers too.

In public sessions there are usually no warning flags for backstrokers, and because the pool can be configured to different lengths, one needs to take extra care not to collide with the end walls.

Other general observations:

There are six lifeguard stations, sited so that there would be two per pool when the pool is divided into three sections.

There are two fire exits at pool level. There are mixed showers and changing in cubicles. The high diving is done into the 50M pool. There is not a separate pool. There are nine diving boards, four of which are springboards. They are raised hydraulically.

The single boom moves from the shallow (non-diving) end of the pool. It takes a long time to change the configuration because the lane ropes also have to be changed from 50M to 32M to 25 Metres as necessary.

The public session entry prices are reasonable, particularly for those Luton residents who can claim discounts.

Paul Clarke (Beds ASA Masters Secretary)
swimsite@freeuk.com
01582 508616