Please be advised of the following:
- Friday 8th April's 9.30am Time-4-Me swim session will take place at Challenge Stadium in the Outdoor 8 lane pool. Hope you can make it. This will be the final change to this program - from Monday 11th April onwards, all 9.30am sessions will run at the Claremont Pool in lanes 6,7 and 8 - easy!
- Saturday 9th April's 1.00-2.00pm open water skills squad session will again be at Claremont Pool as normal - there are no further disruptions envisaged to this session going forwards...
- I'll be posting out in the next week or so a quick questionnaire as we head into winter (officially for us between Monday 9th May and Monday 19th September, i.e. ~20 weeks) asking for your feedback with respect to how the squad is going and also to verify which sessions you'd like to keep attending over the winter period. Priority places will be given as usual to those who've been swimming consistently with the squad over the last season or two. I do wish to draw your attention to the fact that in the week immediately after the Rottnest Channel Swim we had a total of 25 new, individual enquiries for swimmers seeking to start training with us. This is an amazing level of interest on no active advertising, however we do not have the lane capacity currently to invite all 25 new swimmers into the program. As such, I have informed them that it is likely that numbers might drop off a little post May 9th and that I can then start opening up a few places and would request that you could let me know as soon as I've released the questionnaire what your best intentions are for the winter period. Hopefully we can sort out a good solution for all parties but as I say, priority places are with you guys.
- Sessions which might get the axe for winter in light of predicted lower numbers attending would be the Monday morning 7am session and the Wednesday morning 5.30am session - again though, keen to hear your thoughts on this when the questionnaire is released given that Wednesday at 5.30am has proven to be quite a hit this year!
- In line with the above and in synch with what we're doing with our eight sprightly English Channel attemptees (see the new website at www.channeldare.com ), I'll be keen to hear your thoughts on what we can do as a squad with respect to keeping you all motivated over the colder months. As an English Channel attemptee myself, I'm praying for the colder weather in order to acclimatise properly for the swim, but for you, you might be put off swimming in single-digit temperatures completely - so what can we do as a squad to keep you focused? A self-organised race? An event? A mini-Olympics? Just a few ideas to mull over for now...
- The lovely Amanda and gorgeous Bae last Saturday paddled for four of us as we made our way down the 14km stretch of coast from Trigg to Cottesloe - the two girls were lifesavers and an integral part of our Channel Swim attempts. If you'd like to get involved and can paddle and have a spare 3-5hrs on a Saturday or Sunday morning (?!) please reply via email with which dates you'd be available for between now and September and we'll start to draw up a roster so that we're not leaning too heavily on just a couple of paddlers. We typically go on either a Saturday or Sunday morning between ~6.30am and 11am for your reference. Please let me know - paddlers sought this week for a long one on Sunday morning doing the reverse of last week from Cottesloe up to Trigg meeting in the Trigg SLSC car park south of the SLSC at 6am for a 6.10am shuttle down to Cottesloe to commence the swim at ~6.30/45am.
Thanks gang!
Paul
