My first race, the 100m freestyle, was planned for around 11.37. So at 9.30 I made my way to the pool. On entering the pool, the sight of it was overwhelming – what an engineering feat. Marine Messe A is massive! It is just unbelievable what was built. You would not think that the pool was a temporary structure and that over a week it would be dismantled! Photos don’t do it justice. It consists of a massive stainless steel tub 😂 with a thick pvc lining. Everything else, like the spectator areas, was also built and supported by a massive scaffolding network. I made my way to the changing rooms got into my jammers and went to the warmup pool. This was another surprise. A full sized 10-lane 50m pool. Again a temporary structure; but you wouldn’t have thought so! Anyway, enough of that. The two outside lanes were reserved for thee 65+ and older swimmers - one advantage of seniority 😉😂 After a good warmup, got dry and went to one of the swimmers lounges to await my call. The meet was running about 20 minutes late. So about 11.40 we got the sign to go to the cal room. We were called by series and had to line up in descending order according to our lane number. I thought this is it - well not quite. We were then ushered to a room with three rows of chairs. Two of the front rows had swimmers of preceding series awaiting their turn. As each series was called we moved up one row. Finally sitting up front, I thought this was it - well not quite 😂
We were ushered into a next room with exactly the same setup, only now additional checks were made; but soon our series was called and we walked into the pool area. Getting us to the start blocks was a rather hurried affair, presumably because they were running late. On the block, under starters orders and off. All that nervousness disappeared as I hit the water and quickly got into a great stroke rate. I felt good and finished strong; but surprisingly my time was tenths of a second outside my qualifying time. Not bad really as I had achieved all my QTs in a 25m pool. My time was still a season best for a 50m pool by almost 1.5”. So overall pleased with that. I went for a swim down, got changed, made my way to the spectators area and had some lunch while watching the swimming. For this event there were 85 series (!) with 10 swimmers in each series. Do the math yourself! Amazingly quite a number of swimmers swam slower than their QTs even in the faster series and younger age groups.
After the warm-up
The warm-up pool
The awesome Marine Messe A swimming pool
The Rwenzori Health Swim Challenge
Competition Day 1, 6 August 2023
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Race day! Although nerves were creeping in the evening before, I slept remarkably well – probably making up for the lack of sleep over the previous two days. Plan for the morning was to get up, have a light breakfast and then head out to the competition pool - Marine Messe A - in good time for a warmup swim. According to the promotional blurb, the pool was custom built, in a congress centre, for the World Aquatics Swimming Championships, which were followed by the World Aquatics Masters Swimming Championships. I had to see this – no escaping it now!
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The end of the 100m Breaststroke race
Finished second in my heat
The 100m breaststroke was next at 14.15 (running late again). I went through the same factory belt call to the start block. This time getting to the block and ready wasn’t rushed - must have been some complaints. I had another good swim and ended again just outside my QT; but again a season best time for a 50m pool by some 5” 😀 Went for a swim down again and ended up chatting to a Portuguese swimmer who thought I swam in the 60+ series - oh for flattery 😂 Anyway, after getting changed I went to purchase a couple of event memorabilia. To my surprise swim caps and T-shirts had sold out the day before and stock wasn’t going to be replaced - apparently because both items were made in Korea 😮😂 Massive opportunity missed there. So I settled for a towel and headed back to my hotel. The whole first day was an overwhelming experience, never having been to such a big event before and I felt drained. Lay on the bed catching up with some news but was soon fast asleep!
The next day was a date with the Black Widow and I had to be fully rested for that. Later on that evening, Amanda and Emma where arriving to join me for the rest of the meet and then going on to Kyoto and Tokyo afterwards.