len masters 5

Holborn station at 5.30 AM waiting for the first train to take me to Queen Elizabeth II Aquatic Centre to swim 200m butterfly. The tiny trace on the left was a mouse. On the same group of benches where I seated, an Italian old gentleman (also heading to the pool) was whistling “La Dona é Mobile”. I imagine he sings it mentally while swimming. I always sing mentally Monty Python’s Liberty Bell March, but only in 50m butterfly. It is way too fast for longer distances.

len masters 4

waiting in queue for 100m butterfly

len masters 3

2 hours queue outside the pool before 50m breast stroke and 100m butterfly. Added to breaststroke and backstroke swimmers suffered from sunstroke .

len masters 2

Len Masters Championship

In 2005, I quit smoking. After almost a year of putting weight I decided to re-start doing some sport and chose swimming. After three years of solitary exercise, people in Clube Nacional de Natação invited me to their masters team (Masters are athletes from 25 to 85 that compete in 5 years’ categories for the best time in each event). The team was also starting and we did a few seasons of competitions. A year ago I heard that the masters european championships would be held in London, in Zaha Hadid’s Olympic swimming pool. I read about the required standard times and started to train in order to go. By December last year and January this year I had meet the standard times by a almost comfortable margin for 50m, 100m, and 200m butterfly, and signed in for the championships that started on  25th May. My wife, younger daughter and mother-in-law came along for museums, attractions and site seeing “competitions”.

So along almost 10 000  other masters it started…