A new challenge has hit the NZMS swim calendar. We want you to help us swim around New Zealand - yes all 15,134 kilometers of it! To help boost that winter training we are encouraging people to enter the distances they have swum online. We will collate the entries each month, and publish the results. You can even organise a couple of teams within your club and challenge each other to see who can swim the furtherest!

Participation is easy. Log onto the website (NZMS members only), and click on the menu item under the competition menu. Each time you swim some lengths after the 1st May 2008, just add up the distance and submit it online - and that's it.

So what are you waiting for - get swimming, and get involved. See here for more details and the submission form.

A library of swim programmes has been started online and is available to current members of NZMS. Programmes have been split into three levels of difficulty, although they can be changed, depending on the time you have. You are encouraged to print these off and have them at the pool with you.

To help increase the content online, we'd like to hear from you about your favourite programmes. Send them to us , and we will share them with NZMS members.

We'd also like your feedback on each of the programmes online. Are they in the wrong category, have you modified them in a particular way, or do you just like them the way they are!. You can leave your comments at the end of each programme.  The library can be found in the Health and Fitness section of the website.

A recent article in “Nutrition Today”, a USA publication, confirms what we all know intuitively – that master athletes are fitter and healthier than their nonathletic counterparts of similar age. The authors reviewed the literature and conclude that, for master athletes.