There's Waldo!

The competition is now closed. In the end 13 Kitkat's were handed over. I know I said 10 but I sold the family farm and bought another 3 thus denying my children their inheritance. Let's face it, my children have done nothing to deserve an inheritance anyway so I figure it was money well spent. But moving on to more important things which is where and who was Waldo. It wasn't too hard was it?

That was tinny of him wasn't it, getting right smack in the middle of a photo in an international publication. Sigh....I should be so lucky.

So Tony, or should I say Waldo, sent in the following report from Sunday's Eagle Technology Bays Swim which I've gone to enormous effort to copy and paste below.

Last Sunday, nine of our seasoned swimmers turned up at St Heliers Bay to swim the Eagle Bays Swim put on by Auckland Central Masters and were greeted by rain and a mill pond sea. As the start time approached, the rain stopped, a gentle onshore wind started to roll in and everything looked good for a great swim. By the time we were standing on the beach ready for the start, confused about the course and what to sight on, the wind was warming up fairly well. The swim to the first mark was merely an introduction to the waves that would carry us to Tamaki yacht club (lazy so and so's are supposed to swim - Ed). The wind whipped up the sea into one of the roughest we’ve had to swim in and made it a real challenge for all, including the support people. Navigation was difficult. The course had few buoys along the way and they were small, virtually invisible in the weather, and there is little on the horizon to help. However, the weather was coming from starboard-stern, which allowed those who coped with the waves to achieve good times. Some swimmers, though, were taken badly off course and arrived at the Tamaki boat ramp cursing everything under the sun. The results are:

Dave Donaldson          55:13    16th overall
Avy Judelson               55:46    18th overall
Liz Hayes                     59:56
Pat Castles                  61:55
Waldo Shacklock         61:57
Vince Kirrane               62:13
Angela Tomlinson        71:25
Barry Cribbens            72:52
David Walker               74:49

Thanks Waldo! 

New Photos Posted

If you entered the 'Where's Waldo' contest and didn't hear back from me it's not because I'm rude, it's because I didn't get your entry. It's come to my attention that the email link won't work for everyone. So.......it's not too late to enter - have another try. Go back into 'my complete profile' and click 'email' but this time copy and paste my email address into your email client and send me a private message. If you still don't get a reply from me then whisper your answer to me at training.

There was a great turnout for the sea swim and picnic ant Little Buckland's on the 5th Feb. Some stunning 2km times were posted. Shirley sent in some photos. If you want to see them go to the Photo Gallery page.

Where's Waldo?

Be part of our first online competition. One of our club members was snapped before the start of November's Harbour Crossing and the photo was published in the recent H2Open magazine. Can you correctly identify the club member? I have 10 Kitkats to give away to the first 10 people with the correct answer. To send your answer go to the home page of the blog, click on 'view my complete profile' and then click on 'email'. Here is the photo:

Thanks Jason for spotting the photo and sending it in

Rules of the competition:

1. To be eligible to enter you must be a paid up club member. If you are not a club member you may still have a guess but you may not win one of the wonderful Kitkats that I have paid all of my life savings for.

2. You may have one guess only, so if you are wrong - bad luck! Please put your name on the email; no name = no prize. These prizes will be sought after so I must be fair about it.

3. Competition ends after 15th February. Unclaimed prizes will be eaten by the blogmaster - blogmaster will be angry at competition winners over any ensuing weight gain.

4. No correspondence will be entered into. Prizes, magnificent though they are, are not transferable and not refundable.
5. No permission was asked or given to reproduce the photo and blogmaster doesn't care.  H2Open will not care either since we are not benefiting in any way.

February Birthdays
It's that time again and we get to to celebrate some birthdays. Here are the birthday people:  Shirley Cartwright, Mark Clavey, Anne Faulkner, Christine Fergusson, Mike Harrison, Deryn McGregor, Jan McEwen. and a special mention for Kath Barclay as she celebrates a milestone this month. February is a popular month isn't it, perhaps we should share some cake.

Race Night Results, Trophy's
The first race night for the year was held on Wednesday with the 400 Free proving popular and some very good times being posted. It was noticed that no one opted to swim the 400 IM. 7 Records were established or broken, 2 of them in relays.

Angela T had baked some wonderful brownies which all who stayed for trophy presentation enjoyed. Both the wooden spoon and Swimmer of the Month had several nominations and much umming and errring was had. Gus took out the wooden spoon for his new invention of team-building exercise involving car key retrieval by speedo clad swimmers. I don't think this will catch on in the corporate world (togs togs togs undies).

Swimmer of the month award went to a very hard working Barry Cribbens. Barry has set goal after goal, many of them quite lofty and has achieved them all. In January he not only completed his first half ironman but he completed the swim in a time that was an astounding 5 minutes faster than he has done before, in conditions that were completely conducive to the opposite. He trains night and day (when does he sleep?), swimming, biking, running, biking, swimming, biking, running; I lose track but I have visions of him out running in the middle of the night like ultra-marathon man, Dean Karnazes, and have baffled pizza delivery boys standing out in the wop wops wondering what is going on. Well done Barry.

Coaching With Tony
Tony has posted an updated schedule on the Coaching Corner page so check it out. If you want help from Tony, you know where to find him.

A Few Site Stats
The blog has been running for a year now so just for those stat-heads who are interested, here's a few stats from the 12 months:
Total pageviews: 7839, which equates to 21 per day; so either 21 people a day are having a look or Mike Wansink is looking 21 times every day (!)
Views from 10 different countries, most popular is NZ (go figure)
Most Popular Pages (in order) are: Records Men, Records Women, Photo Gallery, Swim Programmes
Most Popular Posts (in order) are: Fame!, Where's Arthur, Prince of the Bays, Good Night Out Had

However, popular posts will now be hard to gauge since people now subscribe and don't have to click in to individual postings, so it may no longer be a fair reflection of popularity.