The Monday Evening Masters session at the Dolphin has 6 lanes and 5 standard/levels of swimmer: A1, A2 competitive, who swim in adjacent lanes each covering respectively 2800m and 2200m approx: in an hour; B Fitness who have two lanes and cover around 1900m, and C1 Competitive and C2 Fitness who cover around 1800m. Historically I have produced three sessions, all a variation on the sessions first devised for A1. This A1 session is often adapted from a 90 minute session put together for the Junior National Squad. In this instance they would have done 24 x 75m FC at 400m Pace on a shorter turn-around time (TRT) and 12 x 100m IM. Recovery was over 300m rather than 400m. There was also a skills set over 8m on underwater Dolphin Kick and Fly Kick On Back with fins. This I drop for Masters as a) only one or perhaps two swimmers have fins and b) they hate UDLK enough to skip it anyway.

This is the Coach Copy. Poolside is in a larger font, of 18pt, sometimes 24pt and leaves out the last three columns that show the cumulative distance covered, duration and running total time covered. As the swimmers do the set I keep an eye on the time it has taken them and the splits. For A1 this above set delivered to the minute. The variations on this for A2, B and C1 and C2 turned out to be too adequate for A2, stretching it for B, not enough for C1 (though they simply dropped parts of it anyway) and about right, though a more demanding set than they are used to for C2. The distinction between Competitive and Fitness is in their heads, as it is the ‘Competitive’ session that delivers the fitness, whereas too many ‘fitness’ sessions simply get the swimmers wet – like going for a walk, rather than a run.