SWIMMERS from Severnside Tritons Club are working hard in training getting ready to compete at the Gloucester County Championships.

The counties, often also referred to as ‘The Gloucester Blocks’, start this Sunday at Hengrove Pool in Bristol, with a further three full weekends following on up until the end of February.

These are all being held at GL1 leisure centre in Gloucester.

Time spent in the pool training can mean anything from four hours a week for the younger swimmers, to those in the higher ability groups who may swim up to twelve.

Training sessions are held at Thornbury and Stratford Park leisure centres, as well as Tockington Manor, Wycliffe and Archway schools.

In addition to these, the higher groups also regularly train at the Bath University and Cardiff International Pools – both of which are of 50 metre, Olympic size length. Swimmers may also attend the annual warm weather training, which was held in Calella, Spain in October last year.

Leading up to the end of the year, the club had two teams competing in the premier and second divisions (western) of the National Arena Swimming League, rounds of which were held at various pools between October and December.

Between these, individual events were swam at a number of local swimming galas at Hengrove, Weston, Gloucester and Newport with the intention of gaining qualification times for the county championships.

Severnside Tritons is a competitive swimming club based at Thornbury Leisure Centre, with a northern section based in Stratford Park leisure centre in Stroud take non-swimmers through to county, regional and somtimes national level.