Ollie Otters Swim School and Waitrose Sponsored Swim - the poolside story

Arranged by Ollie Otters Swim School and Waitrose, twenty-nine swimmers took to the water on Saturday evening, 31^st March 2007, raising hundreds and hundreds of pounds. Many of the swimmers and organisers had personal reasons for wanting to raise much-needed funds for:-

Breakthrough Breast Cancer

Cancer Research UK

Macmillan Cancer Support

With six lanes of the 25m heated pool available at Farnham Sport Centre, the swimmers were led off by six children, each challenging themselves to swimming one whole length, quite a distance for them. Then, with four or five swimmers in each lane the older swimmers took to the water for their 64 (!) lengths, each supported by a buddy counting up the lengths they had done - or counting down how many were left to do to complete their miles.

As the swimmers approached the half way mark their thirsts were building up, but luckily Waitrose had generously provided spring water and Lucozade to help the swimmers look after themselves. Or maybe it was the suggestion of making it to the pub afterwards?

The first swimmers to complete their sponsored miles began emerging from the pool, with comments like, "It's a long time since I did that much backcrawl - I won't be able to move tomorrow!"

The ages of the swimmers ranged from youngsters to young-at-heart retirees, with at least 50 years difference in ages - yet they all completed their swims. Although most swimmers had targeted one mile, two people managed to swim TWO miles (128 lengths)! They were Sue, from Waitrose at Bracknell, who completed 2 miles which for her was a personal best as she'd never swum that far before, and Karen from Ollie Otters, who'd swum 120 lengths in practice, and had had to be talked out of going for three miles!

Ollie Otters and Waitrose gave all the swimmers certificates of achievements for completing their one mile swims.

Well done to all the swimmers - so far over £3640 has been raised for the three charities!!