It was the first open water Serpentine Session of 2012 in Hyde Park this week, and 16 swimmers took the plunge. Starting at 7:00pm, we were given a ten minute warm up, followed by some drills and some sprints. Then Alex gave us the main set made up of 800m, 600m and 400m negative split swims, which doesn’t seem so bad when a length is 100m. After a warm down, most of us swam 4k. Not bad for a Wednesday evening. Of course all of this is done as the sun slowly sets over the Serpentine Bridge. Whilst it doesn’t help with sighting early on, it certainly helps later on as it reflects off the still water. The friendly geese and moorhens were also back and looked on with a bemused look on their faces as we paddled on by.

A few super hardy swam without wetsuits including this year's Channel swimmers, and swam for an extra half hour to complete their 2 hour required swim.

We will do this all over again every Monday for a few months from 7:00pm - 8:30pm: come and join us!

PLEASE NOTE: IMPORTANT SUMMER 2012 CHANGES

Oasis and ULU are both closing over the summer for essential maintenance. All of our sessions in those pools are cancelled in the following periods:

• Oasis: last session on Thursday, 31 May 2012. Closed for approximately 8 weeks.
• ULU: last session on Saturday, 2 June 2012. Closed 4 June - 3 September.
• LONDON BRIDGE:  closed for essential maintenance - re-opens Monday, 11 June.

The Orchard Lisle (London Bridge) is also closing from 1st of June till the 11th June for boiler repairs and our sessions there cancelled accordingly.

A new session has been added at Queen Mother on Saturday evenings from 19:00 - 20:00 during the time of the ULU and Oasis closures.

We are hoping to resume our normal schedule below in September.

The Tournoi International de Paris took place last weekend (from 25th to the 28th May) and greeted athletes from several countries with amazing weather and an ideal enviroment for sport and socialisation. Out To Swim was amongst the biggest groups to take part in this competition from outside of France. You can download a link to the results of the various swimming tournaments from the following link:

TIP 2012 Results.

Emma B. has taken some amazing pictures (you may need to log in to view them).

"On Saturday 12 May 2012, 6 OTS swimmers, Lizzie B, Martin B, David DM, Ming Y, Rob J and Lucille T, headed off to the Essex County masters competition supported by Martin S, Lizzie’s mum, dad, nan and uncle!

We had a fabulous day at a  very relaxed event. The highlights (as well as in Ming’s hair) were: David DM doing amazing PB’s every time he swum but the 7 second reduction in his 400 free was outstanding (nothing to do with his new fast skin 3 jammers!). Rob J winning his first medals at only his 2^nd competition ever, rounded up with Lizzie and Ming winning gold every time they raced! The rest of us cleaned up too with a medals haul in total of  11 golds, 4 silver and 4 bronze medals.

Our supporters didn’t just sit around either Martin S took himself off for an hour and half run and Lizzie’s mum plying us with lovely muffins she’d baked.

We all chatted afterwards about how important it is to compete, because even if you feel good in swim sessions, putting it all to the test at a competition can really highlight what work you do or don’t have to do!. It also helps motivate and refocus each of us to keep training and keep working on our skills so we can keep improving."

Lucille