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British Swimming Masters Championships 2023

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                                                                “Are you racing at the weekend?” asked the Head Coach as I plodded along with a kickboard during my swim down on Wednesday morning. I’m sure he regretted asking – when I proceeded to rattle off a million reasons that I wasn’t sure it was a good idea, how I’ve not entered events I’m particularly keen on, not trained as much as I’d like, that I’m top of my age group and have a hospital appointment in London on Friday morning which meant I might not make it up to Sheffield in time for the 100 back early afternoon. Excuses out of the way I started to pack. I’ve previously written about the faff of packing now I’m a bit older and this occasion was absolutely no exception! I sent a message to my team mates WhatsApp group to seek reassurance that it wasn’t just me that now simply cannot travel without far more than just swim kit alone. I first declared myself ‘old’ when I realised I could no longer travel without my own cafetie
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Downhill Days & Uphill Battles

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                As another race season draws to a close I thought I’d take the chance to reflect on the highs & lows of this year. There have been a lot of both, thankfully equalling each other out.  Unfortunately it’s been impossible to ignore the elephant in the room- my breathing, which has really got in the way & continues to impact my life & my swimming. I don’t talk about it much, because I can’t change it; suffice to say that it takes a lot to make me question whether I want to keep swimming & this season I’ve had that conversation with Dave more than ever before.  My season started with a masters 400, where at 300m I stopped breathing & had to do the next 50m on my back whilst trying to work out what to do!! I finished, it was outside 5:00 but, I guess, at least my backstroke was looking good!! Then National masters, I swam fine, bronze in 1500 & gold in 200 back but I just didn’t feel settled. I’d completely lost confidence in my racing & realised I
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No one posts the bad pictures!!

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                                                          No one posts the bad pictures                                                                    Jo Mitchinson I’ve long wanted to write a blog entitled “No one posts the bad pics”. We keep the 8 chin photos, faces that give away exactly how we actually feel about a situation & eye rollingly awful day photos away from social media - despite strangely keeping them stored on phones. We favour the uncharacteristically good ones & even then feel obliged to be self deprecating about them!!  So here is a selection of some of the worst/most random photos stored on my phone from the last 12 months & the stories behind them!! First up was January lockdown- online teaching. I did this for a soul destroying 5 months in total, ‘Teams-ing’ lessons into firstly students homes & then into my own classroom, through a seemingly endless speed date of supply teachers who often sat right in front of the camera preventing me from se
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2020 'Head's Up'

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                                                                                                                       What I wish I'd known in January 2020.... 1) That New Years Resolution about not drinking weekdays?? Scrap that immediately. By the time 2020 is done you won’t even know what day of the week it is.  2) From April the government will be delivering your food shopping; you'll be incredibly grateful but their view of essential food is very, very different to yours. It seems some people prioritise real life actual potatoes over crisps!! Stock up on your essentials - crisps, wine and chocolate. 3) Your concept of a ‘short course’ swimming pool will change forever. 4) Buy a new sun lounger now – the price will double and you’re going to put your arse through both of the ones you’ve got. 5) You’ll honestly receive texts from the government telling you not to leave home, not to even put your own bin out because it’s too dangerous for you and advising you to exerci
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Living in Lockdown

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Living in Lockdown Jo Mitchinson - AquaSphere and MP Brand Ambassador When my parents first took me to the pool for swimming lessons 37 years ago they wanted me to be safe in water. When I joined a swimming club 36 years ago they wanted me to enjoy my swimming. That’s all they’ve ever wanted. Be safe and enjoy it. I remember the exact day I learnt to swim- it’s one of my earliest memories. Hartham pool, open air, small pool, swimming underwater back to the side. I remember the colours that the sunlight created underneath the water & I remember the muffled sound of being submerged as life went on above me.  I didn’t bother learning to breathe because I couldn’t see the point. If I got there quick enough I wouldn’t need to. I passed my 5m & 10m badge before failing my 25m because I didn’t know what to do when I ran out of breath. I panicked & my teacher grabbed me before I drowned. So I tried again the next week, simply took a bigger breath be
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2019 - the one that nearly got away!!

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Jo Mitchinson-  Aqua Sphere and MP Ambassador Perfect training setting in Lanzarote in October Towards the end of the year, I always start to reflect on the past 12 months and make plans for the new year. This frequently then overspills into a December blog about how the year’s gone. Over the past few years, having read my blogs back, I see lines like “one of those amazing seasons where everything just went right” and “my top 10 races of 2017”.  If I was going to summarise 2019 it would be ‘brutal’. Emotionally and physically. It’s been a year of massive change, setback after setback and, a taste of what life will be like when swimming is no longer part of it, courtesy of a 4 month break. The year started well, with a swim that astounded me at the County Championships. From that point on, it all started going downhill, with my goals changing from getting a swim at the English Nationals to simply completing a session.   The breathing issues I’d managed for 3 year
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A Life Less Ordinary/Lycra Still Looks Awful!!

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A Life Less Ordinary/Lycra Still Looks Awful Written January 2015 (updated August 2019) January 1 st 2015 – New Years Day, a time for planning new adventures, goal setting and for our family, the start of a whole new era. High performance/elite level sport has been a constant in our relationship since I met Dave at Loughborough University in 1997. At that time, Dave had been to the World Junior Cross Country and was the English Schools Steeplechase Champion and I was – well, an injured ex-swimmer. But sport, the dream of major championships and the sharing of the common values that sport offers shaped our relationship. Nearly 20 years later and Dave has decided to finally hang up his spikes (all of them –5mm, 6mm, 9mm and 18mm), off road trainers, trainers for actually training in and racing flats following a series of niggles, which at the age of 36 have proven to be insurmountable. So, we find ourselves facing unchartered territory – life without 100
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