There was the usual absolute frenzy in Binge’s life as she tried to escape for the World Masters Swimming Championships in Budapest. Not helped by the fact that I fly off on a family holiday the day after I return.
I know I’ve moaned how a holiday clear up involves trying to anticipate every thing that’s likely to crawl out of your filing cabinet during your absence and leads to a rather difficult and predictably swim free period in the run up to a major championships. see here in 2012, here in 2014, and here in 2015.
This time was no exception. I was bitterly regretting the fact that this anxiety ridden period had led to a thus far dry August had probably wasted all of the swimming I’d done earlier in the year.
But I was Budapest bound with a decent flight time or so I thought, because as I was wandering around packing at 8:30am a text pops up from Judo and Sumo (long suffering travelling companions) “we’re in the departure lounge” Oh my god …. my blood runs cold, mad panic to locate and check boarding pass and I still had 2 hours and 5 mins before the flight left so what was their problem?
Decent flight ( crash free), arrive at apartment (nice but no air con), unpack and head to the pool to collect our accreditation, negotiate the metro system without too many wrong turns although Sid the copper’s kid, otherwise known as Craig Heggie (just don’t ask,) managed to stamp the credit card receipt and not his ticket and on emerging from a station, Forgách (which sounds like it was roughly translated from Klingon ) we set off in completely the wrong direction courtesy of google maps or was that the fact that we are all ageing techno numpties.
Surprisingly none of us had thought to take our kit so we missed the opportunity for a training swim in pool B (a pretty impressive olympic sized secondary pool).
Absolutely ravenous we made our way back to town for dinner and a close encounter with Grimbergen Dark which sounds a bit like a Harry Potter character but was actually a rather agreeable Hungarian Brew.
Day 2 and we set off for a training swim in the “inferior” Duna B pool, which of course is pretty much as good if not better than most 50m pools we have at home. A leisurely 2000 metres some starting practice and then off to the British reception to catch up with every one.
2000 metres plod in Duna B
Bingeswimming 