Round up of some fantastic achievements at Leeds National Qualifier
18 Apr 2023
Friday nights are traditionally distance nights at big meets. They have a different atmosphere - everyone knows everyone else has trained exceptionally hard to be there. There's no talent bonus to the 1500 like there can be with the 50s. Coaches are often heard around poolside telling anyone who will listen: "this is proper racing, none of your sprinting rubbish here."
Friday nights then are honest, there's no where to hide.
Roll on Tynemouth's Friday Night Crew. Five athletes across four heats of 1500m Freestyle produced a heat 1-2 and four other heat runners up. The 1-2 was pretty exceptional, coming in the penultimate heat Jai would have won with an enormous 30sec lead had it not been for training partner Dan splitting the difference (17:32, 17:44; the rest of the field failing to break 18mins). 35sec PB's for the pair.
The action started off with Sophie in heat 1 though. Not quite keeping pace with the Leeds girl who would touch first, a 2sec PB was accompanied by a disappointing "hmm, I don't even feel tired." Always a good sign when a swimmer knows they can swim faster than a new PB.
She'd return the next morning for the 800m to make amends, against the same Leeds girl. It looked set to be a repeat, with two Leeds girls pulling away for the first 300m and opening a 4sec gap to Sophie. Then something clicked, and the fight back began. By 400m she'd caught Friday night's rival, 100m later she was overhauling the leader too. She went on to win her heat by a good 7sec.
Heat 2 saw Charlotte leading most of the way, until, yet again, a Leeds girl clawed her way back into the fight. Unable to hang on to the blistering finishing speed, Charlotte touched 2nd with a 10sec PB.
The boys were yet to come, and good as their swim was, it wasn't our swim of the weekend. That belongs to the slowest entry for Heat 3. From lane 9, Molly sprinted her way to 400m, 13sec faster than her PB. That speed continued to 800m where she dipped under her N&D PB by 11sec. With 300m to go it looked as though the wheels were coming off, but she dug in deep to touch 46sec faster than her N&D performance 2 months earlier.
That might just qualify her for Nationals in the summer - from nowhere.
We'll keep our fingers crossed on that, and hopefully the same for the boys.
Jai returned on Sunday morning for the 800m looking a little jet-lagged from all the travelling. Despite that, he went out within 1sec of his 100m PB, and 2sec of his 200m and 400m PB's. Not what we normally recommend, but Jai can hold such a pace. A 5sec PB was his reward by the end, for another fine performance.