How Much is Too Much?
So the first weekend of Yorkshire Championships is behind us and we scored a respectable medal tally. Four Gold medals is the same as last year's opener. Eight Silver medals is one extra. We lacked a few Bronze medals (four to be exact), but with the illness suffered in the latter half of last year, that's probably not surprising. The end of 2019 was a bumpy road, that's for sure.
Times such as we've just experienced are frustrating and demoralising for swimmers, parents, and coaches alike. Hopefully we're past the worst of it, although new cases seem to spring up each week, the extreme cases seem to be gone. Fingers crossed.
Training at this level though, does leave young bodies susceptible to illness. You're drained from all the hard work and vulnerable to whatever is floating around. Our immune system doesn't work as effectively in the cold so it's important to wrap up warm. Even if your muscles are still burning post-training, your respiratory system will still cool rapidly when breathing in cold air! Mouths, throats, lungs are particularly easy attack vectors for colds and flu - so be sure to protect them at all costs.
Be a trend setter - make scarves fashionable!
But enough of the health warning, let's get back to Yorkshires before the next weekend comes around. One of our multiple medal winners was delighted to highlight to Head Coach Dave Cuthbert that she'd completed a whopping 10 races over the weekend. Not something Silver and Bronze medalist Ella Bainbridge (Arm) generally does it would seem, but many do. That got us thinking about all the questions we get from parents asking: "how many events should little Johnny be doing?" So let's run with this topic.
Our general guidance can be found on our First Meet Information page. That gives many useful instructions for those of you just starting out. However, all those suggestions go flying out the window at Yorkshires (and NERs) when you have heats and finals to contend with. We wouldn't normally recommend 10 events (around 8 is optimal). But come championship season everyone is in the same boat: swim the heats fast enough to reach finals, then compete for the medals.
So who do you think at Dartes competed in the most events this weekend? Probably more impressively, who do you think raced over the most distance?
Ordinarily we would NOT recommend that much racing in a single weekend and indeed, looking back through our performance database suggests that the 2400m completed by Daisy Purchase (Edl) this weekend is around the upper limit for a two day meet (as you'd expect). Well done to Daisy for reaching 4 out of 6 finals - her first year to do so outside of the 1500m!
In addition to the Silver and Bronze won by Ella, we had eight more medals won by our domineering duo. A still struggling with illness Luke Gilliver (Drn) braved his way to Gold in 200m Butterfly and 200m Backstroke, then settled for Silver in 400m Freestyle and 200m Freestyle. The Golds in those two events were claimed by Callum Broadhead (Arm) who also took the Silvers behind Luke in the other two events.
As of Monday morning, British rankings for 13 year olds (age end of year) in those events looks like this:
All of which means absolutely nothing for the time being - they're far too young for it to be a prediction of anything. You don't have to be involved in the sport for long to know that dominant young swimmers rarely make it to senior ranks, so we won't get excited about this unless they're in a similar position at 16. It is however, immense fun to watch the battle unfold between them from the poolside.
We have a few other stars collecting silverware too. Young Jesse Goodwin (Adw) returned home to Doncaster with a couple of Bronze (200m Backstroke and 400m Freestyle). Down another age group and Jenson Owen (Edl) managed a couple of Silvers (400m Freestyle and 200m Freestyle) to go along with his Bronze for 200m Butterfly. Then there was Lucie Savage (Adw) showing off her Backstroke class with a Silver in the 100m.
