The Abbey in Bath

The Roman Baths in Bath

Little John's grave, with Dave showing how long it is!

Inside the castle with Hayley and Dave

The diary of those who passed from Plague in Eyam

Bath, England

       

I’ve been in Bath, England, for 5 weeks now, and settling in well. The city is beautiful, my teammates are awesome, and the coaching staff is excellent. I’ve worked with Kim Swanwick, the head coach at the University of Bath, for a year and a half now (mostly by distance), and am settling comfortably back in with his program. I’m keeping closely in touch with my home coach Steve Alderman and program at the University of Sydney, and I’m confident that I’ve found myself a great situation in which to focus and train.

I did some fantastic work this past season at The Race Club in Florida, even though the results didn’t show as well as I’d hoped for at Pan Pacs. All that power and speed work is certainly transferring well through into this season though! Since I’ve been in Bath I’ve done a lot of speed and power work, as well as speed endurance, and spent a great deal of time fine tuning my technique. Because really, fine turning is what it’s all about! It’s amazing to think how if my hand pulls through the water a couple inches wider than it’s technically supposed to, over the course of a 50 that can amount to half a second!! That’s the time difference from 1^st to 7^th place at the 2004 Olympics. Those details COUNT!

I have three more weeks to focus on the technical preparations and hard training before the racing season starts. Being in Europe means I get some fun travel meets, and I have a meet planned in Bolzano, Italy, in November. I’m also racing in northern England, and then heading home for World Championship Trials. Fingers crossed and wish me speed!!

 

I’ve also found some time to be a bit of a tourist in England. I’ve visited the namesake of my town, the Roman Baths, and the gorgeous Abbey in the city, as well as the quaint surrounding towns. Last weekend I had the opportunity to visit a Sydney Uni teammate of mine; one who, through his support and camaraderie, helped me a great deal on my journey towards the Olympics. He’s living up in Sheffield, England, which means I had some opportunity to visit the city and surroundings. He took me on a tourist drive up some of the walking hills around Sheffield, which are absolutely stunning, to a castle (or the remnants of one at least!), to see Little John's grave (from Robin Hood) and to the town of Eyam. Eyam is an especially interesting little town because it’s the location of a very isolated outbreak of Plague in 1665. They were brilliant fore thinkers though, and through group commitment toward the common good, entirely isolated themselves and their town from all others to restrict the spread of Plague. They were successful, and the result was that their town was the only town in Derbyshire that was infected. Sadly they lost all but 80 members of their town. It’s an impressive story of team work and commitment through very difficult times, something I’m sure we can all appreciate!

England is beautiful, and driving through the countryside is often awe inspiring. It’s beautiful and green (probably because it rains 3 out of 4 days!!). I’m looking forward to visiting Wales and hopefully Ireland, but the focus is of course on training, so tourist activities have to fit in around that.

 

            Time to get those details right!