About Leo Crawford

1. Sports
2. Interests
3. Professional

University was the end of my couch-potato days. I admit that I spent the first year without doing anything more strenious than lifting a pint or moving all my stuff back and forth from halls to home every term, but something important happened; I met a bunch of guys and girls who were the University of Warwick Lifesaving Team.

I spent most of the next two years, in between lectures, struggling to improve my swimming, competing in lifesaving competitions, taking lifesaving exams and socialising with some of the maddest people I know.

I came out of the two years with a pretty complete set of lifesaving qualification (Brone Medallion, Aware of Merit, Life-Support 1 and 3, National Pool Lifeguarding Qualification and the basics on how to teach lifesaving to others) - and a horrific screw-kick on my brest stroke.

The next year was spent living it up in New Zealand. I decided though that it was time to become a proficient front crawler. I spent hours in the pool practicing, and was lucky enough to get adopted by the Auckland Masters who gave me a few pointers. Somehow I ended up as a very competant crawler.

The year changed me from a lifesaving who needed to swim to someone who swam for the sake of it. I'm still desperate to try and improve my swimming. To this end I think I know about all the swimming pools around cheltenham, and quite a bit about the training and clubs available in the area. In time I'll try and build my own swimming resources page.

My primary form of transport in Auckland was a bike. This hasn't changed even though I have a car. My Marin Hawk Hill is my primary for of transport - and also one of the ways I spend my weekends.

As well as swimming and cycling, I've been known to do a bit of running. Although I'd probably not run much for the sake of it I choose to do it to support entry in soem of teh adventure races I've participated in. These are multi-day multi-event competitions that tend to involve as many strenuous forms of exercise that the event organisers can think of. The two I've taken part in so far are:

1. Challenger Trophy (2000 event, where we came 7th)
2. Ace Races

I've also taken part in the:

1. The Stroud Half Marathon (2000)
2. National 10K Run (Cheltenham, 2001)

As well as sport I've got quite a few interests. The main one probably computing - sad I know but it's something I do outside of work as well as in - as this website shows.

I'm a keen traveller and after spending my year after graduation abroad I take every opportunity to spent time in new places. My holidays page shows a list of places I've been to recently, and places I'm heading off to. As well as holidays I'm eager to spend some more time living abroad.