Pool work keeps Alison on course

TRAINING PAYS: Alison McKay in January, soon after she received confirmation she had set a New Zealand record in the women’s long-course 1500 metres for the 80-to-84 age group. McKay decided to give the World Games 1500m a miss, as it was being contested as an ocean swim, and back and neck problems keep her to the pool. Picture by Paul Rickard

ALISON McKay held a few Hawke’s Bay swimming records in her youth. Freestyle was her stroke, and she cleaned up in her age-group.

She’s still doing it.

This week, former school principal Alison, 81, received confirmation she had set a New Zealand record for the women’s long-course 1500 metres in the 80-to-84 age group.

These days she trains at Gisborne’s Enterprise Aquatic Centre. She moved to Gisborne from Mahia two years ago and, not having swum for 25 years, she took up the pastime again, aiming to swim a length for every year of her age.

She does that pretty much every time she trains now, knocking off about two kilometres a session. Building up to an event, she trains three times a week; otherwise, it’s twice a week.

Alison plans to swim at the world masters games in Auckland in April, so in November she took part in the national long-course masters swimming meet run by the North Shore master swimmers’ group to give games competitors an idea of how they were going.

She knew she could swim faster than the New Zealand record for the women’s 80-to-84 long-course 1500m — “50-something minutes” — and decided to have a crack at the mark.

This week she received the certificate informing her she held the registered long-course record: 36 minutes 12.09 seconds.

But, having achieved that milestone, she has decided not to contest the distance at the world masters games.

“The organisers have made it an ocean swim, and I don’t ocean-swim,” Alison said.

“I have a bad back and neck, and can only right-breathe. If the swell runs in the wrong direction for me, I struggle. I’m a pool swimmer.”

She will not be idle at the world games, though. She has entered the 800m, 400m, 200m, 100m and 50m freestyle races.

She held a swag of Hawke’s Bay age-group freestyle records when she was young, and was a regular visitor to Gisborne for interclub meets.

Competitive swimming went on hold when she became a teacher in 1953, but in the mid-1980s, when she turned 50, she went back to the pool.

Alison came to Gisborne in 1988 — “I arrived with Cyclone Bola” — to be Te Hapara School principal, and in 1990 was one of about 60 New Zealanders who competed in the world masters swimming championships in Rio de Janeiro.

Having swum at the world champs, she gave up swimming again and in 1994 left Te Hapara School to return to Hawke’s Bay and a position at Porritt Primary School, Taradale.

She retired in 1996 and moved to Mahia, where she was a relief teacher until she called it a day at the age of 77.

Having shifted to Gisborne again, Alison found the nearby Enterprise Aquatic Centre to her liking and rediscovered her love of swimming.

The attraction?

“I have trouble walking because I have bad problems with my back, but in the water it’s peaceful and I can get my exercise,” she said.

“Some mornings I can hardly walk to the pool. I swim a couple of kilometres and I walk out of there like a spring chicken.”