"I am sure quite a few people will go to this competition from London" I thought to myself as I registered.  WRONG!

So I went on my own to Hamburg Startschuss Hamburg Queer Cup 2010 this Easter Weekend.  Startschuss is a multi-disciplinary gay sports group that was founded 20 years ago, but this is their first swim event.  It was a one day event in a lovely 25m pool and 100 swimmers took part.  I made new friends with the gay swim group in Birmingham and helped get bronze in the 4 x 50m freestyle relay.

The "medals" were rubber ducks which was cute, and I got a few more in my other races including GOLD in the 400m Individual Medley ... despite coming last in the first heat!  Gold for bravery! That race hurt!

The party was really good in a concrete bunker overlooking the city ...s ome contradictions in that last sentence I know .... but the party was excellent and I like watching Germans dance. There was also a brunch which I didn't attend.

I stayed in hosted housing which worked out really well.  Startschuss will do this event again, and I recommend more people from Out To Swim support them as Hamburg is a fantastic destination with masses to see and do .... but mainly because it feels terrible sat poolside on your own not having any team mates to shout at and cheer on!  The picture is of me wearing the Easterbunnyrelayswimoutfit (literal German translation).

UPDATE: Chris ran the marathon in 4h05 and raised £2,730 for charity.  Well done, Chris!

Since Christmas I have been pounding concrete in London and the New Forest, to train for the London Marathon 2010 in support of Diabetes UK.  Yes, I have become a RUNNER.

Your development coach, Chris Cutler, is hanging up his speedos to run the 26.2 mile run around London on the 25th April 2010.

You may think why am I doing it??  Besides being mad and helping to lose weight and getting a trim tummy for the Gay Games in Cologne end of July/ August, I have decided to run for the charity Diabetes UK. This is a charity very close to my heart as my sister was diagnosed as a type one diabetic at the age of 18 years old.  Her lifestyle has changed over the last 3 years and she has learnt to come to terms with living with it and looking after herself with her daily injections, blood tests and a healthy/ balanced diet.

Did you know:  there are 2.5 million people diagnosed with diabetes in the UK.  Every three minutes someone, somewhere in the UK will learn they have diabetes.

I am trying my best to help this cause, and help to improve lives of people with diabetes and to work towards a future without diabetes. But before this can happen, I need your help, to find out how you can help please by making a small donation on the JustGiving website.

If you fancy coming along and cheering me on it would be great to see you there! I need all the encouragement and cheers I can get, to help me through it!

For more information about Diabetes UK and the amazing work they do please visit: www.diabetes.org.uk.

Thanks so much for your help and support,
Chris

Well, GLLAM 2010 is over! Another day's excellent racing, followed by a great party and then brunch for those who hadn't had enough!

Now that the competition is over here are a few things to you to remember/do:

• The all important final results can be found here.
• For your enjoyment, here are some photographs.
• Finally, we had a great time at GLLAM 2010 but we need to make sure that you did as well.  Please take 5 minutes to complete our survey.

The chair of OTS, Alex Magliaro, had the following to say:

"I'm so proud to be a part of this team. All I received this weekend was compliments from visiting swimmers on how friendly and helpful the OTS members were.  Looking back onto Saturday the events ran so smoothly because everyone worked together as a team.  Egos were pushed aside for the greater good and it was noticable and remarkable.

So a big thank you from me to the membership (and our visitors for coming to London!).  I think we can all be proud of a successful event and something that our visitors will happily look back upon and look to share with others for GLLAMs to come.

Again I have to thank Eric Chaline who chaired the event, George Gardiner for his incredible dedication to every detail, Lawrence Springall for organizing the volunteers, and Oonagh Gormley for running the meet sheets and the events table.  They made it look easy."

OTS fielded a team of 15 swimmers at the Upstream Valentine Swimming Tournament in Amsterdam over the weekend.

Thanks to Eric for organizing the team dinner on Friday night at Humphreys which was highly enjoyable.  The swimming got underway at a very civilized hour on Saturday afternoon – to the relief of those who stayed out at the registration party until the wee hours of the morning.

The final medal count for OTS was 24 including an impressive 18 GOLD, 5 silver and 1 bronze. Many swimmers were encouraged with the personal best times that they achieved over the weekend.