Meet a member – Kerstin

Regular readers will know about the strength of our out of town membership.  Kerstin is another member who competes for Spencer even though, since she moved to Switzerland, she can no longer train with us.

Kerstin grew up in Spain, where her parents were very keen for her to learn to swim after a neighbour’s kid drowned in the pool.  She started off playing rugby, but her father was not keen so signed her up for the swimming club instead.  Fortunately she grew to love swimming, and swam competitively, specialising in front crawl and backstroke.  She still remembers one gala when she swam the first 25 m of a 100m fly freestyle, before realising her mistake.   Kerstin represented Spain internationally at 16 in its junior team, and still has her team tracksuit as a souvenir.

 When Kerstin was 18 she contracted glandular fever and spent several months in hospital. She never really made it back to the pool, and stopped swimming for over 25 years.  She eventually got the swimming bug again, and in January 2016 Kerstin was living in London and joined Spencer because she wanted to train for the European Masters Championships at the London Aquatic Centre.

 She now lives in Zurich with her husband and two daughters (who are not that enthusiastic about swimming).  When she moved she decided to give up her job in banking and now teaches adults and children swimming on a part time basis. She tries to train four times a week with the Aquatic Masters team, which includes some other Spencer out of towners. At present her favourite stroke is butterfly, and she is trying to change her breathing pattern (from every second stroke to every stroke) to allow her to go further in training.  At the moment progress feels very slow!  In training she like IM sets (with plenty of rest) but is not so keen on lots of 200s and 400s.  And do not push off two seconds behind her drafting and touching her feet!

 Kerstin does various other sports, such as skiing and snowboarding, and has recently learned kitesurfing, wake boarding and the flying trapeze!  As she does not “age up” until 2020, she is considering taking 2019 as a “transition” year to focus on these other interests.  But she will not be able to ignore the pull of the pool for long….

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