Chris Hobson
Well-Known Member
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Type 2
Unwritten swimming pool etiquette.
The main pool at my gym is 25 metres long and fifteen metres wide. The pool is divided by ropes into three five metre wide lanes, each of which is headed by a marker board that instructs the swimmers to swim clockwise or anti clockwise depending on the lane and also marks the lanes as being for slow, medium or fast swimmers. As you approach the pool from the locker rooms, the slow lane is on the left, fast lane to the right, medium is in the middle. Generally the fast lane is populated by those that I refer to as proper swimmers, people with a professional looking crawl technique who can also do tumble turns and butterfly stroke. The slow lane contains those who tend to do a style of head up breast stroke, not always slowly but, in some cases, extremely slowly. Then there is the medium lane where I tend to spend most of my time. For a bunch of people who don’t really know each other, apart from our regular encounters at the pool, we all seem to make quite a reasonable job of getting our swimming done without getting in each other’s way. I find it interesting that a kind of etiquette has developed naturally that facilitates this.
One factor that affects how we interact is how busy it is. If there are only two people in the lane, there is usually a brief conversation and a quick agreement to abandon the circular swimming and just swim up and down side by side. This is good because it doesn’t matter if the two of you are swimming at a different pace. While doing this the two swimmers have to keep an eye out for any newcomers, an extra swimmer means quickly swapping back to swimming in circles again. This then brings us the problem that not everyone swims at the same pace, and so between us we have found various work arounds. First, if you are a little slower than the others you can keep an eye out for swimmers catching you up and just move aside and let them in front. Not all slower swimmers are so considerate however, so the second solution is that the quicker swimmers put on a spurt and barrel down the middle of the lane and reach the turn ahead of the slower swimmers that way. The third solution is that the slower swimmers get a bit more competitive and try to keep up. This is where it gets interesting as pace and stamina are put to the test. Because, since the start of the year, I have been regularly swimming sessions of four kilometres or a hundred and sixty lengths, I have started to develop some fairly impressive staying power and so twice recently I’ve been able to test rival swimmers until they have had to stop for a rest. This is quite satisfying for a sixty something old git. Getting tested by other swimmers has also meant that my times for my 4k swims have reduced from two hours to inside one hour and forty four minutes. I shouldn’t get too full of myself though, I’m still not ready for the fast lane yet.
I'm currently attempting to swim 500 miles in a year for the guide dogs charity.
www.justgiving.com/fundraising/chris-hobson9
The main pool at my gym is 25 metres long and fifteen metres wide. The pool is divided by ropes into three five metre wide lanes, each of which is headed by a marker board that instructs the swimmers to swim clockwise or anti clockwise depending on the lane and also marks the lanes as being for slow, medium or fast swimmers. As you approach the pool from the locker rooms, the slow lane is on the left, fast lane to the right, medium is in the middle. Generally the fast lane is populated by those that I refer to as proper swimmers, people with a professional looking crawl technique who can also do tumble turns and butterfly stroke. The slow lane contains those who tend to do a style of head up breast stroke, not always slowly but, in some cases, extremely slowly. Then there is the medium lane where I tend to spend most of my time. For a bunch of people who don’t really know each other, apart from our regular encounters at the pool, we all seem to make quite a reasonable job of getting our swimming done without getting in each other’s way. I find it interesting that a kind of etiquette has developed naturally that facilitates this.
One factor that affects how we interact is how busy it is. If there are only two people in the lane, there is usually a brief conversation and a quick agreement to abandon the circular swimming and just swim up and down side by side. This is good because it doesn’t matter if the two of you are swimming at a different pace. While doing this the two swimmers have to keep an eye out for any newcomers, an extra swimmer means quickly swapping back to swimming in circles again. This then brings us the problem that not everyone swims at the same pace, and so between us we have found various work arounds. First, if you are a little slower than the others you can keep an eye out for swimmers catching you up and just move aside and let them in front. Not all slower swimmers are so considerate however, so the second solution is that the quicker swimmers put on a spurt and barrel down the middle of the lane and reach the turn ahead of the slower swimmers that way. The third solution is that the slower swimmers get a bit more competitive and try to keep up. This is where it gets interesting as pace and stamina are put to the test. Because, since the start of the year, I have been regularly swimming sessions of four kilometres or a hundred and sixty lengths, I have started to develop some fairly impressive staying power and so twice recently I’ve been able to test rival swimmers until they have had to stop for a rest. This is quite satisfying for a sixty something old git. Getting tested by other swimmers has also meant that my times for my 4k swims have reduced from two hours to inside one hour and forty four minutes. I shouldn’t get too full of myself though, I’m still not ready for the fast lane yet.
I'm currently attempting to swim 500 miles in a year for the guide dogs charity.
www.justgiving.com/fundraising/chris-hobson9
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