After the nightmare at my first competitive gala I soon became a regular selection at the club and my competitive swimming took off. I had a competitive spirit, and enjoyed the challenge of trying to win my races. After a while I discovered that my best stroke was butterfly. It may be one of those occasions where everyone else took a step back when asked if they wanted to race butterfly, but I liked the challenge and that soon became my regular racing stroke.
At the age of nine I became the regular butterfly swimmer at our competitive galas for my age group and did ok. Each week the results were summarised by one of the parents and an article appeared in the local newspaper, the Lichfield Mercury. I’m sure hardly anyone other than club members and family read them but it was always good to get your name in for an ego boost. I got labelled the club veteran before I reached the age of ten, having managed to rack up a few single length wins.
At that time I was fairly small but that didn’t seem to impact my speed. I think this only became a factor as I got older and the physically more mature swimmers started to get the advantage of longer limbs, bigger feet and broader shoulders. I think I can say I was a pretty good club swimmer, but was never going to get much further than the one Staffordshire county cap I picked up. Even that was pretty fortuitous as I’d finished 6th in the county championships at the individual medley. This normally didn’t qualify swimmers to get picked for the county meets, but there was probably a combination of absentees, injuries and doubling up which meant I got my selection. I was delighted of course, and so were my parents. I came 3rd in the I.M. race I swam in, but it wasn’t really about that. It was my first experience of competing at a higher level and I loved it. It felt as though I had stepped in to a slightly different group of athletes and was reward for years of swimming up and down Lichfield Friary pool. I still have the swimming cap I was given on that day as a souvenir. It was signed by Olympic medalist at 200m breastroke, Nick Gillingham, who was there at the county meet, so it made it extra special.
I swam for the club all through school, right up until I went to University. I got a lot out of it on a social level as well as from a fitness perspective. My mum was heavily involved in the organising committee as well as taking on record keeping and timing roles at galas. My parents also made great friends with the other parents, so it was a great social environment which was perfect for me growing up. We even had a twinning arrangement with a club in the Netherlands, Horst. Every year we would make the trip over to them or they would come to us and we would compete in a gala. These visits were always great fun and added an extra dimension to life at the club.
At one point I was training up to eight times a week, it became my life. Having just started taking my daughters to galas and training I am only just beginning to understand the dedication of my parents in supporting my hobbies at the time. I sometimes trained twice a day and I was selected for swimming galas most weekends, with open meet events on top of that. It was great for me but it must have been tough on them, although they have never said so.
I’m not sure many of my school friends really understood my dedication to it, but it suited me just fine. The more sport I could do the better as far as I was concerned. I still have the same attitude today. I’m not sure where it came from exactly as I didn’t come from any particularly strong sporting heritage. My dad was a very keen rugby club player, my grandma played a bit of local cricket and My grandad rowed for Hereford. But there was nothing to explain why I would become so preoccupied with sporting challenges.
After school I went to Loughborough University to study Economics. For no other reason than my school basketball coach was the Economics teacher, and I quite enjoyed his classes. Loughborough seemed like a good option as it was pretty well known for being the most highly regarded sports University in the UK, and was also recommended by my basketball coach as he knew how in to my sport I was. The Economics side really had nothing to do with it. In his own words I was ‘definitely not a natural economist’ as he told my parents during sixth form parents evening. Undeterred, and with no other idea for a subject to study I applied to and got accepted in to Loughborough to study Economics.
By this time I had other areas of focus, so swimming wasn’t my main area of interest. I joined the swimming club during fresher’s week, and took part in fresher’s trials. With the standard being very high, I only managed to qualify for the B squad. After the initial adrenalin rush of joining University sporting life and attending a couple of galas in the second squad, my interest tailed off. As you get older, hairier and your eyesight makes it difficult to read the training notes on the pool chalk board, the life of a swimmer starts to get less and less appealing. I started to get interested again later on when I looked in to triathlons, but swimming as a standalone sport was no longer an option in my mind.