Newport Are Off to Swim Britain

Yay, we have news of our first team to join Swim Britain!

The Smiths Mermaids hail from customer services in Newport and comprises: 

• Claire Hockey – CS Team Leader


• Judy Read


• Kelly Bennett


• Sue Shepherd

Their swim is due to take place in Cardiff on September 22nd.

Judy Read adds:

"Sue was a lifeguard when she was younger but other than that we thought we would like a challenge. We are all frantically training at the moment and didn’t realise how far 1,000 metres was. We went to a 25 metre pool and realised we had to do 10 lengths at a time to do the 250 metres. We then have to do that 4 times to make the 1,000 metres each, which is quite daunting.

We also have a weekly “fat-fighters” charity event in Newport which has just started to help us lose weight and help us get into our party clothes for Christmas – we pay £1 per week and then £1 extra if we put weight on in that week.  We will give half of what we raise to charity and the person who loses the most will win the other half of the money.  We did this between Christmas and Easter this year and raised £90.00 for charity (the British Heart Foundation - Ed). 

Training for the Swim Britain is helping us with fat fighters also,  as in our first week we all lost weight and Claire managed to lose a fantastic 7lb."

What a fantastic way to raise money and it's great that Swim Britain is helping to shift the weight! That must be a great motivation to keep going and I'm sure 1,000 metres will seem less daunting as your training progresses :)