Meet a member – Claudia

Claudia joined Spencer in January 2017, having got to know Jessica, Christian and Esther through swimming.  She was no longer working in London on a regular basis (she is a freelance IT consultant) and was attracted to Spencer because of its reputation for ensuring that out of town members still feel very much part of the team, even if they do not train with us very often.

Claudia enjoys competing in the pool for Spencer, where her favourite events are 100m free and 800m free – she is not so keen on middle distance! She also enjoys relays so she can share a successful moment with her teammates – the photo above shows her post relay with Amanda Deborah and Jessica. As a teenager, Claudia competed in Open Water, but she dislikes cold water and so now limits this to events where the water is clean and warm.

Claudia was born and grew up in Germany.  Claudia’s mother, who could not swim, was keen that Claudia should learn to swim at an early age, and she was a freestyler from the start.  She has had a couple of breaks from swimming, including  when she went to university in Germany where there is no tradition of competitive university swim teams, but something always brings her back to swimming.

Despite her work taking her on projects all over Europe, Claudia tries to train a minimum of three times a week, ideally with a couple of friends but, due to travel, Claudia often has to train alone.  She therefore has to face with her bugbears with public swim sessions: long hair/no hats and slow swimmers in the fast lane!  Training alone does mean that she gets to set her own sessions – such as The Hackett 200 and the famous Auburn Sprint.  Claudia does not like switching strokes too often, and so 200 IMs are her idea of hell.  As well as swimming, she tries to run once a week (or more if she does not have access to a pool) and also does yoga and skydiving.

Claudia has had some shoulder injury issues recently, and her current target is to get back as close as possible to her pre-injury times, including a sub-30 second 50 free.  But her main aim is just to staying in the sport, improve on one level or another, and have fun.

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