callymasters

A small group of Cally swimmers attended this meet on 23rd September and came away with an impressive haul of medals. It would be great to get more swimmers there next year as it is only a short way up the road and is always so well organised. By next year, the event should take place in the brand new pool currently under construction. So make a note in your diary now for next September!

Richard:
Gold 50 fly
Silver 100 IM
Bronze 50 breast
Bronze 50 free

David (who competed in an impressive 8 events):
Silver 50 back

Rebecca:
Gold 50 fly
Silver 100 free

Sara:
Silver 100 breast
Silver 100 free

Sue:
Bronze 100 breast
Bronze 100 IM

Also congratulations to Valeria who swam in her first Masters Meet for Cally in an excellent time!

Sara also discovered that there are certain benefits from reaching a certain age…

Five Cally swimmers headed to Lago d’Orta in the Piedmont region of Northern Italy. Lago d’Orta is a stunningly picturesque lake with its own island town near the centre.
The race is a 27km swim up one side of the lake and then back down the other. 23 solo swimmers entered the event along with ten relay teams all (apart from one) made up of three swimmers. There was a mix of those in wetsuits and those swimming skins.
The rules for the relay teams meant that each swimmer would swim for an hour and then the next would take over. The team members not swimming would stay on the boat next to the swimmer and get a chance to rest and refuel.
The solo swimmers started first on Saturday morning , each accompanied by kayakers to guide them and look after their nutrition. The relay teams headed off shortly after.
The two Cally teams led out from the start and had gained a healthy lead by the first change-over after an hour. The two-man team then started to forge ahead and by the half-way mark both Cally teams were well-out in front of the rest of the field.
Towards the end of the race all members of the relay teams were able to swim the final part together and so Lorenzo and Nils swam in together for a first place finish in a time of a little over 6 hours. Csaba, Alex and Luka joined them around 30 minutes later, followed by the first solo swimmer around another half-an-hour after them.
It was an amazing race to take part in and the organisers were delighted to have two teams coming over from London and made up of five different nationalities.
We’d highly recommend it to other swimmers looking for a long-distance relay or challenging solo swim!

Callymasters win again – this time at a 10K open water swim in the Jubilee River. The event has over 450 entrants and marks the beginning of the season. By the time the race started, the river was drenched in sunshine and looked stunning as it meanders through the Berkshire countryside. The water was almost bath temperature at 17.5 degrees C – the warmest it been in the 7 years of the event.
It was a one-two again this year for Cally: Lorenzo won the event with Nils second, both beating their times from 2017 and coming in under 2 hours. Laura took a huge chunk off her previous time and just missed out on the podium for the women in a time of 2 hours 12 minutes. Gary took over 16mins off his PB to complete the 10K in under 2.30min. Sara, Rebecca and Helen all overcame pre-start concerns and nerves and had terrific swims to complete the course in excellent times.

Cally Masters were out in force at the Middlesex Masters Swimming Gala held at Barnet Copthall Pool last weekend.

Everyone swam well and Cally Masters achieved a well-deserved overall second place. Cally excelled in the relays in which all members of the team took part. These were a fun but gruelling set of 24 different events, all completed in less than an hour!

Cally’s Swimmer of the meet was Cath in the 65-69 years age group, who struck gold in all 6 of the individual events, scoring a maximum 36 points for the club. Cath’s 50 metres butterfly was an outstanding swim. In the men’s competition, Gary (26 points) and Richard (25 points) were Cally’s top swimmers. Both men swam in the 60-64 years age group and the competition between the two was greater than with the rest of the field in the freestyle events. Richard triumphed in the longer 200 metres and Gary in the sprint 50 metres. A special mention goes to Ingrid and Bethan who were competing in their first gala for Cally Masters. Bethan won gold in the 50 metres freestyle and 50 metres butterfly in her age group (30-34 years).

The Middlesex Masters Competition is the annual gala open to all masters clubs in the region. This year it was held at Barnet Copthall on Saturday 29th July.

A team of 19 swimmers represented Cally Masters. Swimmers competed in age-group events of 50m freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke and butterfly as well as 200m freestyle and 100m individual medley. There are also a variety of relays to take part in.

Swimmers gain points for each top 6 place in their age group and so every swimmer earns points for the team. There are also lots of points on offer for relays.
Cally had won the women’s competition for the last two years and this year we maintained this proud record. Well done to the women!

Our men’s team improved our standing from the last couple of years and came in second to a large, strong team from Out to Swim.

This improvement meant that we took first place overall and are the Middlesex champions!

Congratulations to all that swam (and those that couldn’t make it but have pushed us all at training)!

Here is Sally’s write-up of a great weekend…

_{If you noticed that the Saturday morning session was quiet last weekend it was because it seemed like half of Cally Masters had decamped to Wales to take part in The Big Welsh Swim. Seventeen swimmers from the Cally travelled to deep dark Wales to take part in the open water event in Lyn Padern (a lake!). It really was a perfect event with something for everyone – distances that attracted a variety of swimmers from the club – distances available ranged from 1.5k up to 9k,  and you could swim in a wetsuit or ‘skins’.} 

_{Ominously the week started out with a rather alarming email from the organisers saying that Saturday was going to be WINDY – who then outlined many ways you could downgrade the distance you’d decided to swim ‘if you felt like you wanted to’. Not very auspicious.}

_{However the gales forecasted only lasted on Friday, and by Saturday morning, at the start of the event, the skies were blue, the lake was calm and looked – dare we think it – inviting!} 

 _{Lyn Padern is 3k long, and a little tourist  train runs the length of it. So the swims were one-way, two-way or three-way depending on what you’d elected to swim. We all met before hand at registration for morale-building/nerve-calming/team-photos. Jo C turned up just in the nick of time as registration was closing, and Dylan had to walk for an hour down from his hilltop campsite to get there – talk about a good warm up! It was great seeing everyone at the start.} 

_{We had entries in every category of race except the 1.5k:} 

_{Nick, Amy, and Jo swam the 3k (also swam by a Parliament Hill lido friend of Dylan and Cath’s – Janet – who we adopted for the weekend).} 

_{Sally, Hilary, Jon K and Paula swam the 6k,} 

_{Sage, Katie C, Laura, Lorenzo, Nils, Luka, Gary, Steve and Dylan showing their mettle in the 9k.} 

_{With the training for this being ‘sketchy’ from various quarters, and with some people carrying injuries, everyone was delighted to have finished their races.} 

_{Amazing results from everyone for finishing – especially Dylan in the non wetsuit category  (although Dylan is in the middle of his Channel training so probably saw a mere 9k swim as a taper). In the 9k there was yet another clean sweep 1-2-3 for our great competitive Cally men and also a 1 and 3 placing for Cally women showed us as a strong team. Amy deserves a special mention for coming overall 1 in the 3k – ahead of any of the women and the men. We were in the top three for at least one category for all distances!}

_{This event really does have something for everyone – a variety of distances, not too cold water (17.5C), amazing scenery, a little train ride (!) and good organisation. Llanberis is a sweet little town that very nearly coped with an invasion of hungry swimmers as well as a whole swathe of runners who were setting off the following day for the Snowdon marathon!}

_{If you need any more persuading to come and take part in an event like this then here are a couple of pictures of the Saturday evening meal and the Snowden hike led by Gary on the Sunday morning.}

As has now become usual, a team of Cally swimmers headed to the Stoke Newington West Reservoir for the ‘Splash’ races run by Capital Tri.

There are races of 750m, 1500m and 3km.

Ingrid swam for Cally for the first time and came in in a great 5th place (beating all men doing the same distance).

Sara, Mari, Jo and Amy P all swam the 1500m and posted very handy times; Amy came in second and earned our first medal of the day.

Katie C took home the second medal and just sneaked a gold – winning her 3km by a narrow 10 minutes. Hilary and Clare C were just outside the medal places, finishing just 3 seconds apart from each other.

Luka, Csaba and Nils swam the men’s 3km and filled up all 3 podium places with a very satisfying Cally 1,2,3!

If you haven’t raced there yet, hopefully this might inspire a few more of our swimmers to join us next time.

Several of our swimmers swam at Barnet Copthall on the weekend of the 8th and 9th of July.

It was a distance meet which gave Richard, Sue and Lorenzo the chance to race 800m freestyle. Lorenzo and Luka also took on the 400m freestyle.

The full team of Sara, Luka, Sue, Dee, Richard and Lorenzo (as well as Natasha who competes for us) also raced several 100m and 200m swims.

Lorenzo especially hit some really fast times (which won’t be a surprise if you’ve seen him training!):

200m freestyle : 2.08.56
400m freestyle: 4.32.57
800m freestyle: 9.22.77

Well done to all that raced!

A group of nine Cally swimmers headed out to Berkshire for the 10km Jubilee River swim on the 11th June 2017. The swim has been running for a few years and is a chance to swim down a lovely stretch of a river constructed as a flood relief channel for the Thames. There are three weirs along the course where swimmers have to exit the river and run a short distance (as well as get a chance to refuel at the feeding stations) before continuing the swim.
It was a glorious day both in terms of the weather and in the results for Cally Masters.
Lorenzo powered away from the rest of the field and won the event in a stunning time of just over 2 hours. None of the things sent to test him (almost swimming down the first weir, not being able to find his energy drink at a feeding station, not being recognised by somebody who swims next to him at least a couple of times a week) put him off his stride and it was a well-deserved victory!
Nils and Luka made up the next two places of the male swimmers for a Cally 1,2,3!
On top of this, Sara and Rebecca  were half of the first placed female relay team (along with ex-Cally swimmer Camilla and her sister), Laura C finished as 7th placed female swimmer, Gary B and Katy G finished close together in the top 100 and Dylan H did the whole thing without a wetsuit (and with a relay swimmer attached to his feet for one of the legs).
We’re pretty proud of the results and hope that we can send a contingent next year to keep it u

p!

Here is Laura’s write-up of the event. Thanks for organising it Laura!

On Sunday 9th April Team Cally Masters 1 and 2 descended on the pool for a Swimathon organised for Marie Curie. No, I did not come up with the names, I obviously would have named us Team Sparkle Pants and Team Bubble Masters.

It didn’t start off too well: Lorenzo confessed to only having been awake for an hour (and there was some suspicion of a hangover) and Bronwyn went to the wrong pool.

Luckily Sue was on time, changed and ready to swim, Bronwyn found the right pool and Lorenzo pulled a speedy swim out of the bag. Abigail even brought her daughter (hello mini Abigail!!), and Csaba had a ball of a time overtaking everyone and decidedly not wearing the bright pink cap I chose as our team colour (sparkle pants!) Sue was so dedicated that it was difficult to make her stop by the end and she swam two extra lengths.

All in all, it was a really lovely way to spend an afternoon. Thanks to all who turned up to swim for such a good cause, and hopefully see you all there again next year!