Last weekend a full squadron of 10 hardy OTS swimmers - Neal, Andrew, Paul, Tom, Grace, Emily, Chris, Diogo, David and Grady competed at Tooting Bec Lido with water temperature at around 8C. With most of the squad being under the age of 45; only 2 in the over 45 category and none in the over 60 years old category we knew were at a slight disadvantage to SLSC and the Serpies. Nonetheless, we made up by power and speed winning almost all of our races prompting the MC to say “Oh, and it’s Out To Swim touching in first again…”
The brave ones - Grace, Tom, Chris, competed in 4-8 events, the not so brave ones got out of their dressing gowns in the last minute to get into the water once or twice.
Our spectacular performance in the relays and especially in the squadron relay (all 10 swimmers swimming a length each) where we won by more than a length (represented as a width of the lido) blown the spectators away and the Serpies congratulated us with gorgeous Guinness cup cakes.
Unfortunately we didn’t manage to keep the Heron cup, it went to home team SLSC instead.