Easter Swimming Training Camp   During the Easter holidays a group of 40 swimmers aged 12 – 18 years from Ashford Town Swimming Club, City Of Canterbury Swimming Club, Faversham Swimming Club and Royal Tonbridge Wells Swimming Club travelled to Belek in Turkey for an intensive swimming training camp. Ashford Town S.C. had the following 9 swimmers attend; Emily Wood, Alex Scott, Chloe Law, Sophie Law, Amber Hurst, Charlotte Roberts, Alice Turner, Emma Ford and Megan Slater. The training camp consisted of a 6am start to a 9pm finish for 6 consecutive days. During that time the swimmers had 2 x 2hour pool sessions and 1 hour of land training (circuits, stretching) per day. As the week went on the swimmers became more exhausted but managed to continue and finished with a gruelling final pool session. This final session was a challenge set comprising of the children swimming every event in the Olympic Games as follows: 1500m Freestyle, 200m Butterfly, 200m Backstroke, 200m Breastroke, 200m Freestyle, 4 x 100m Individual Medley, 100m Butterfly, 100m Backstroke, 100m Breastroke, 100m Freestyle, 4 x 50m Individual Medley, 4 x 100m Medley relay, 4 x 200m Freestyle Relay, 4 x 100m Freestyle relay, 800m Freestyle and finally 50m Freestyle – a total of 6150 metres. The swimmers all gained a huge amount of experience from the trip and increased their fitness immensely. Overall they swam between 55000 – 60000 metres (34 - 37.5 miles) and consumed between 27000 – 33000 calories in the 6 days. Well done to all those swimmers who attended and keep up the hard work!     Ashford Swimmers Coached by Olympic Star   Ashford Town swimmers Tom Slater, Jessica Richards and Melissa Grace (picture) recently spent a weekend training in the pool at Crystal Palace.The training session was run by Mel Marshall, Olympic swimmer at both the Athens and Beijing games, it was attended by 60 specially selected swimmers from across East Kent. The weekend, arranged by East Invicta Amateur Swimming Association, included a gruelling eight hours of pool training, two hours of land training and inspirational talks from Mel Marshall. The weekend showed the swimmers just what they could achieve and proved to be a good bonding session for all the different club swimmers and coaches. Michele Slater, one of ATSC coaches who accompanied the swimmers, was impressed at how hard the swimmers had worked in the pool over the weekend. Tom, Jess and Mel, along with 11 other Ashford swimmers are now preparing to meet up again with the other clubs at the Kent County championships, being held at Medway Park over several weekends in February and March. The following weekend Three swimmers attended Kent County ASA development camp, the swimmers Alex Scott, Emily Wood and Joe Scott (picture) were invited to attend the camp following their great results at the Kent county development gala held last November. The day included talks and swimming sessions led by Xander Alari Williams and Steffi King, who are 2010 county captains and competing for Team GB. There were also nutrition talks for both swimmers and parents by Anita Bean. Alex, Emily and Joe found the weekend hard but enjoyed meeting the Team GB swimmers and the team building. These events show the collaboration between clubs which is part of the initiative to develop all swimmers as part of the eXcel East Invicta Team, in order to maximise the swimmers potential using the wealth of expertise both within and outside the East Invicta region