Swimming Is A Team Sport

                                                                                                                       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...

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 breat...

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 mana...

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...

“Jo Mitchinson 40 Stevenage” I’d been dreading seeing the start list for Counties this year. The reality was no better than I had anticipated. There, in black & white- Jo Mitchinson 40 Stevenage. 40?? The sting of this is made slightly worse because I am not actually 40, yet. I’m currently enjoying my last 5 weeks in my 3rd decade to be exact!! And yet, there, for all to see- sandwiched between a 14 and 17 year old is a 40 year old woman who won her first county medal at this event 30 years ago. In short- it makes me feel very, very old. Being older than my opponents is one thing. Being able to have given birth to any of the other competitors, finishing uni before most of them were born, remembering when every local pool was 33m & therefore racing over 3 or 6 lengths was the norm is another. The support I’ve received from swimming parents has been amazing; the acceptance from my training partners who put up with my strange quirks is very appreciated. I’...

My love/hate relationship with the 1500m Jo Mitchinson - MP Ambassador & Team Aqua Sphere UK Athlete I’ve recently had the ‘pleasure’ of racing two 1500’s in 6 days. First at the Barnet Copthall Masters 1500m meet where I went 18:26 and next at the Stevenage Swimming Club Champs where I went 18:14. The opportunity to once again swim an event that I loved in my early 20’s has brought back a lot of memories of the random thoughts that occupy my mind in the time it takes to swim 60 lengths of the pool. I thought it would be worth getting these down so that coaches & parents understand what may well be happening inside the head of their athlete.  I’m not sure if it’s just me, but when I dive in I always congratulate myself for not false starting. Then I think a phrase that has been with me since I was young “get up, get out, get on your way” - which basically encourages me to settle quickly into a strong rhythm.  And then the weirdness kicks in and my lo...

Aqua Sphere Snowman Mile  Jo Mitchinson - Team Aqua Sphere UK athlete “Can you actually camp?” That was the first message I received as I approached my campsite in Snowdonia. I’d stopped at what my phone said was the last Costa before I arrived, for one last 'just in case' Americano. As a generally organised person, I was confident I could pack for 3 nights in a field on my own before a race. Unfortunately, my confidence waned as I lost internet access, then phone signal & turned onto a farm track in the pouring rain. Composure regained,  I set about pitching my tiny tent in the horizontal downpour. Then the inflatable mattress. I didn’t want to get it wet on the floor while I pumped it up so I congratulated myself on my initiative and began inflating it in the front seats of the car (Skoda Citago!). My first camping malfunction of the week was being unable to prise the fully inflated double mattress back out of the car again. Eventually I had to let...