Sky Academy Sports Scholars: PB's galore for Siobhan-Marie O'Connor

At the beginning of this month I competed in the Berlin International Meet. This was my last long course competition before the Commonwealth Trials which start on the 10th April.

The weekend before Berlin I competed at the BUCS long course championships as a guest of the University of Bath. I was only able to race in the heats as I am not a student but I was happy with my times.

After another week of training, my squad and I travelled to Berlin to race over the weekend where we were joined by other British teams, such as Manchester and Loughborough. I wasn't expecting to race as well as I did because we have been in very hard training but I swam four PB's and won four golds.

I was especially pleased with my time in the 200IM as it places me very highly on the world rankings for this year and is a great confidence boost ahead of our main competition for this part of the year.

We are currently in the final push of training before we start to taper and rest for the trials which take place in Glasgow. This weekend I competed in my county championships just to freshen up on my skills and racing before I start to rest. I swam the four 50m's, PB'd in three and was only two hundredths off the other.

I am now looking forward to starting taper as this is the best part of the year for any swimmer. It is great when you start to feel good and hopefully see that all the hard work earlier in the year has paid off.