My next competition was the British Gas International Swimming Championships which was held 24/6/14 -28/6/14 at Manchester Aquatics Centre, Manchester. Due to my age, I was competing in the 16 & Under age category. The competition was run very differently to normal events, with the heats for each event taking place in the evening session, and finals the following morning. I was not sure how it would pan out and had to organise potential time off school from the Tuesday to Friday, totally dependant on my performances in the heats.
DAY 1 – 24/6/14
My first event of the competition was the 50m Backstroke. Entering the event with a time of 31.30, I was really pleased to produce a new personal best of 31.29! (just 1/100th of a second faster than my previous time). The fastest 16 & Under swimmer’s time was 30.32, I was disappointed however as I missed out on the final, finishing =12th with two other girls.
DAY 2 – 25/6/14
After a normal morning at School, my dad picked me up at 2pm and I returned to the Aquatics Centre to compete in the 200m Breaststroke and 50m Butterfly Heats. In the heat of the 200m Breaststroke, I finished in a time of 2.40.25, slightly disappointed, I was determined to do better in the final as I had successfully qualified 7th fastest overall for the 16 & Under age group final.
The 50m Butterfly was literally 15 minutes after my previous 200m Breaststroke heat, barely having time to recover, I entered the ‘splash and dash’ event revved up and focused on doing a decent time. Entering 29.71, I was extremely pleased with my performance of 29.15, producing another PB and qualifying 8th fastest for the final to be held the following day.
DAY 3 – 26/6/14
I arrived at the pool bright and early in order to prepare myself for my first finals session of the Competition. After watching the recorded footage from my 200m Breaststroke heat from the day before with my Head Coach Mike, we meticulously went through the race, picking up on various areas of my performance requiring urgent improvement. The fastest qualifier for the 200m Breaststroke final was European Youth Olympic Festival Gold Medallist, Abbie Wood from Derventio (Sheffield). At the 50m point, I hit the turn first with a split time of 35.22, 0.7 seconds ahead of Wood. At the halfway point (100m) I had stretched the lead to 1.7 seconds, touching in a time of 1.14.23, I felt really comfortable with my race and I just kept going! At 150m, I had yet again pulled away, taking the lead up to 1.89 seconds turning in 1.54.68. With just 5m to go, I could see that Wood had visibly closed the gap, but somehow, I successfully managed to hold her off, taking 1stplace in a phenomenal new personal best time of 2.35.50, some 2.5 seconds faster than my previous PB! I was really pleased with this performance, and couldn't believe what time I had done when I looked up at the scoreboard!
However, less than 10 minutes later, I was back in the pool for the 50m Butterfly final. Having set a PB in the heat, and just swam the 200m Breaststroke final, I was very surprised with my result. The winner of the final finished in a time of 28.42 and I was extremely pleased to finish in 8th position in yet another PB of 28.97, just 0.55 seconds behind the winner! My mum recorded the race and I was surprised at how close we all were at the finish, the winner could've been anybody.
After I had finished my finals and swim down, my mum took me back into school briefly for a couple of hours to do an English assessment, and then she collected me again during my 4th lesson and took me back to Manchester for the Day 3 Heats Session.
The afternoon session was a much quieter affair with just the 100m Breaststroke Heat. Entering with a PB of 1.13.03, I swam my heat in a slightly slower time of 1.13.44, and qualified fastest for the 16 & Under final which was to take place in the morning on Day 4.
DAY 4 – 27.6.14
I competed in the 100m Breaststroke final, at the 50m point, I turned 1st in a new 50m PB time of 33.82! It was a very close race, just managing to hold off my nearest rival, Sarah Tripp, I finished in a fantastic new PB of 1.12.12, with Tripp finishing just behind on 1.13.23.
Then it was back to school for a couple of hours before returning to the pool for my final event of the competition, the 50m Breaststroke. After setting a new PB in the final of the 100m Breaststroke (split), I was determined to see what time I could pull out of the bag. However, If I made the final, Iknew that I would unfortunately have to withdraw due to catching a place to the IOM to take part in a ‘team building day’ for the IOM Commonwealth Games Team! The race was almost over before you blinked! With 8 swimmers in the heat, I finished 2nd in yet another PB of 33.53! Thinking I would be pleased with my time, my dad gave me the thumbs up, however, I knew that I could have gone faster, there was plenty left and I had struggled to ‘get going’. My next attempt at this event will be the Commonwealth Games themselves! When the results were posted, I was really pleased to find out that my time had amazingly qualified me 5th fastest for the ‘Open’ final, where I would have swam against some of the top British sprinters in this event.
On the whole, this was a very successful competition for me, finishing with 2 x 1st place positions and an 8th position in the 16 & Under Age Group, along with the potential to have done well in the 50m Breaststroke Open final. I was also very happy to find that I had finished with a 100% PB rate, 3 x New IOM Junior Long Course Records and 1 x New IOM Senior Long Course Record! After Glasgow in a couple of weeks time, my sights are now set on competing for the Isle of Man at the Commonwealth Youth Games which will be held in Samoa, September 2015. With qualifying times now published, I have to date successfully achieved 10 of these times, 5 of which were achieved at this competition alone!
