Elly Gandy’s Postcard from Oz - April Update

I came back to England in March for the World Trials and it went by SO quickly. As soon as I got back to Australia I was back in the water training.

Training alone is so boring but despite a few frustrating public swimmers I managed to keep to my schedule.

That’s one of the problems with training abroad - my season is often on a different schedule to the Australian one and my whole squad was still training and preparing for the Aussie trials.

So instead of taking a break while all my mates were still training hard, I decided to train up to their nationals and then take a break with them all in April.

When they left for nationals it was a different story. I was on my own with no coach or squad and I had to keep up training for ten days until their nationals finished and we all had a few days break.

Training alone is so boring but despite a few frustrating public swimmers I managed to keep to my training schedule.

I also decided to get my bike out and cycle everywhere - partly to save money because petrol is through the roof at the moment and partly because I could get my aerobic fitness up without having to swim up and down alone for hours on end!

The bike track runs all the way from my house to right outside the pool on Olympic Boulevard.

It's been really sunny here for the last couple of weeks, and its lovely cycling along the Yarra trail which goes along the river all the way to the centre of the city.

One of the pools that I train at is right in the city on Olympic Boulevard. The bike track runs all the way pretty much from my house to right outside the pool so I don’t have to ride on the road - I’m known for having accidents on bikes so not having to be anywhere near cars makes my mum feel a lot better!

Last weekend I went up to Sydney to cheer on my squad for the last two days of the Australian World Trials and also to check out what the trails are like over here. The Aus nationals are always televised and swimming is promoted a lot so I had pretty high expectations.

They turned out to be pretty similar to our trials! I was surprised when I turned up to the first finals session because there really wasn’t the crowd I had expected.

I thought the atmosphere we had in Manchester was much better - maybe that had something to do with it being a smaller pool - I’m not sure. Anyway It was a great weekend, and my squad won the point score so we won the ‘Top open club in Aus’ award.

Now it's time for my break and I cant wait! I’m going down to the beach for a few days because my boyfriend has a beach house at JanJuc.

It's about ten minutes along the coast from Bells Beach which is where they have the Ripcurl Pro Surf Tour so I’ll be back down in a few weeks to watch that!

I’ve been here three years now and I’m still as hopeless at surfing as I was when we first arrived! I’ll have another crack at it this week but I know I’ll just end up on a body board, I always do!

Click here to find out more about Elly by reading her British Swimming profile.