Keen to exploit yesterday’s enthusiasm I headed up to Consett for the Masters session this lunchtime. I was stopped in my tracks by the receptionist who advised me that there was “no club on”, sadly my good intentions were dashed by the curse of the “diddy league”

Drat and double drat, what’s a girl to do? Well of course, when the going gets tough the tough go shopping, but as I was pulling into Tesco’s car park it occurred to me that Newcastle Masters Team had a session about this time.

Google advised me their session started at 1pm and it was 12:34, I was going to be a bit late but as I was surrounded by signs reminding me “every little helps” and furthermore this is the run in to the World Champs and with a mere 6 weeks left I’ve got to start somewhere.

I arrived at the pool about 5 minutes late and cheerily waved at His Royal Highness EMSC 7.0 to let me in. Walking around to the entrance I was greeted with a sadistic smirk and chuckle (Dick Dastardly eat your heart out)  and the comment”Great Timing”  as HRH then went on to explain that we were going to do a dreaded test set. Oh no not another test set, how on earth did that happen?

I reckon I’ve only swum with Newcastle about 5 times in the last 12 months so how come that 60% of the sessions have been bloody test sets!!!!! (see here and here)  Does HRH have a severe lack of imagination and simply recycle the test set every other session?

I was beginning to wish I hadn’t (a) been quite so keen to swim today and (b) worked so hard yesterday. Predictably my swimming was absolute pants… (as you might imagine I wasn’t that polite to HRH when he asked me how my repeat times were). I couldn’t hold my stroke rate and stroke count together and despite the increasing rest I just got slower and slower, and although I gamely tried to up the pace it wasn’t working.

It initially seemed that the one redeeming feature about the session was that in the background there was some soft rock radio playing a load of oldies which gave me a bit of mental respite as I gasped for breath. It all started with Fairground Attraction’s “Perfect” well it’s got to be hasn’t it? but sadly not for me this afternoon. Just as things were seriously falling apart I recognised the opening chords and guitar solo of the most famous plagiarised record of all time, my sweet lord! This just about encapsulated my feeling about the session and I can tell you George Harrison never sang a truer line than “but it takes so long, my Lord”. and they were only 100’s

By this time I was beginning to realise that even the DJ was picking on me as Bruce Hornsby’s “That’s just the way it is!” came percolating through the speakers, well I was standing in line marking time! (or I had been before the guys in my lane got out!)

Session finished I collapsed into the car absolutely and utterly cream crackered turn the key and the radio starts up with… Jackson Brown’s Running on Empty…. sums it all up really.

• Warm Up
• 2 x 100 @ 10 secs rest
• 8 x 100 Pull @ 2.00
• 4 x 50 free @ 1.15 first 3 steady, last one hard first and last 15 metres
• 4 x 50 breast @ 1.15 first 3 steady, last one hard first and last 15 metres
• 4 x 50 free @ 1.15 first 3 steady, last one hard first and last 15 metres
• • Main Set
  • 3 x 100 @ 2:00 97, 96 @ 1:40
  • 200 easy
  • 3 x 100 @ 2:10 bleargh don’t even mention it
  • 200 easy
  • 3 x 100 @ 2:20 simply hideous
  • 200 easy
• 3300 metres total

Just in case you are a middle aged rocker and want to relive some of these moments.