Yes lots of logistical battles in a public session! At my local, we have 3 double width lanes, so people will push off in front but a lot of the time there is room in the middle to overtake.
Before I re-joined a swimming club, I would get more frustrated, but now I will switch to drills if the lane is too busy. In particular I like to scull to 2 Live Crew’s “Face Down, Ass up, that’s the way we like to drill”
Amy (Willmott) went to London and Rio, made finals I think for 400IM, same event as her father.
Don’t think Teesside had any other swimmers good enough to be that close to the Olympics. Trying to think of people I swam with younger who may have moved away for career but still stumped. 
That’s who I was thinking of so probably not his daughter as he definitely said she’d missed out twice by one place.
Amy did actually do a talk at the uni quite a few years ago which I went to, was fascinating and the mentality for all the training she was doing and competitiveness, it’s not a surprise they retire fairly young if they’ve been smashing themselves since they could barely walk in some cases.
But equally it seemed like she was driven maybe by fear of failure as well, it must be very emotional at that level? She came across almost a bit vulnerable at times, but I know Pendleton was a bit like that and generally improved when she got a psychology coach as she was regularly getting bullied by the likes of Mears?
Re: your edit, it is possible he was from outside the area originally, he doesn’t have a particularly strong accent for Teesside or anywhere, I’ll maybe ask him next time.
Probably have to go back to Jack Hatfield!
Positive drive fins.
Should I buy them? They’re half the price if my Finis Edge fins and I need a weekend pair to avoid lugging them to and from work.
Could there be technique development in varying the type of fin?
I’ve done so much more kicking the last 12 months but I still barely move and eventually come to a standstill without fins.
Did some faster stuff at the club swim this morning. Some 50s off 2:00 alternating 50 fast with 50 drill. We then ended with a 100 full effort at the very end of the session.
I ended up getting blocked by the person ahead of me, despite a 5s gap, but the reality is I probably equally benefitted from the draft for a period of time before that to offset the fact the final length was slower than I feel I could have gone. Came in on 1:19, which is a jump from where I’ve been recently and is only about 5s off my best, and I think that was in a 20m pool so benefitting significantly from the extra push off
Swim ability is slowly coming back to me. Managed to get a 2:59 for 200m this morning which, whilst a long way from my best is definitely in the right direction.
This was slightly helped by buoyancy shorts which in the past never seemed to do much for me but in my current level made a difference of probably 1-2s/100m.
So encouraged by this I can now aim for <3min without buoyancy and then start looking towards <6min for 400m.
This murder-scaffold © is the 28m high dive board at the world aquatics champs
Womens qualifiers were before lunch from the 20m board and that was scary enough. The gents are off from the top board in a minute
Yeah, fook that. Another one for the what’s worse thread 
Another one of your hidden talents
A 27.5m pool?! Random!
30 yards in old money.
Where are you swimming with 30yd pool?
St Dunstans School which the club uses is 33.3yds , so 30m
Oasis. It’s a bit weird.
It was the DPS I thought you’d pick up on for humour, not the yardage(!)
It had crossed my mind, assumed something was wrong with tech, rather than user 
I was more concerned with your backstroke 
I still feel like I’m drowning with backstroke - due to the water getting in my lungs, probably.
I feel like I need a season focussed on back stroke. My kick is still going nowhere, so I might substitute kick for back once a week. I don’t have fins at the weekend anyway.
Breast, supposed to be easy effort so I’m still counting to three between strokes as you advised years ago - so much more distance. Pace not so good.
The FS were fast efforts but not all out, felt like vo2max if I was going to describe it, 8-9/10.
thast a good drill, maybe cut it to 2 now and see if it improves. just make sure as you streamline into the glide phase you get fully streamlined as possible , then catch properly, then the arm recovery throw them forward as you kick to try and drive the body forward into the glide.
back is all about body position, get that bum up, head still and dont forget very good rotation, more than Front Crawl rotation
Decided to do some benchmark tests this week
1km swim
5km run
20 min FTP test
Swim was this morning.
400m easy warm up and then the 1km
Had my 137bpm track on the earphones and had that as the minimum stroke rate.
Lap button every 200m, so about a 2s gap as I hit the wall, pressed the button, re-pressed and then off
Splits
3:00 / 3:02 / 3:00/ 2:59 / 2:56 - for a 14:57
Bad news is that I’m not any faster
Good news is that I’m not any slower than the last 5 years
