Blog Mission #1

Talent Central

He Does It Again

Smashing His Own Record

Miles Sargent: Second From Left

Introduction

Miles Sargent is a competitive swimmer from Thames Swim Club. He started swimming at the
club in 2016, three years after he moved to New Zealand from Ireland. He is currently in the silver
squad and in the Waikato Caro Cup team for 12-year-old boys. Miles has only just broken the 12-year-old 200 breaststroke club record with a 3.18.85.

The Routine Of A Champion To Be...

First things first, when he gets to the pool he goes straight into the changing rooms and goes toilet
before he squeezes into his unbelievably tight togs (recommended by any swimmer you talk to).
Then he goes with the team and does some dryland and stretching. Next, straight into warm-up for
30 minutes, which goes a bit like this. 400 o/c, backstroke arm count for turn, technique work,
4x25 IMO Fast, and diving to get the feeling of the blocks.

The Race...

Before his races, Miles listens to music. His playlist consists of Eminem, Queen, Khalid and many more pump up songs. But there was one song, in particular, he was listening to before his big race. It was "Till I Collapse" by Eminem.

It was time for him to go down for his race. First, he got his stuff together, his cap and goggles, a towel and club shirt. Then he went to see his coach. "I want you to start off with a good pace and build throughout. Are you going for an aims time in this one?"
"No, I'm like 3 seconds off" (which is a lot of time in the swimming world). "Ok then, good luck!"

"Standing behind the blocks isn't too nerve-racking, but it's when you're standing up on them, that's when they start kicking in."

"BEEP!" Off he goes, into his 200 Breast with an excellent dive and close to a textbook breakout. On his first length, he keeps a good pace. 2:00 minute gone, he's just past halfway and his muscles are starting to really burn up. 3:00 minutes gone, he's on the last length, approximately 18 seconds till it's all over. But wait, he's already at the wall. He looks up at the time with a confused and exciting look on his face. The first thing he does when he gets out it go to his coach and ask her, "Is that my time or is the board broken?"
" No Miles, it isn't broken, well done that was an awesome race"

The reason Miles was so confused is that his original time was 3.18.85, now, the qualifying time for Aims games is 3.15.00. In Miles' race, he got a smashing 3.13.92. That is 2 seconds under qualifying and nearly 5 seconds taken off his record!