Outdoor pool over the weekend. We're the only humans there at the time, but in terms of non-human denizens, it was the invasion of the giant insects and arachnoids.

My husband has started to swim laps, and all of a sudden, he's waving me down in the middle of my warm up because there's a giant wolf spider in the gutter that he'd grabbed ahold of when he finished the length, and he felt like we needed to get it out of the gutter so he didn't end up palming it again.

Another reason to do flip turns, kids: your odds of grabbing Giant Wolf Spiders lurking in pool gutters greatly decreases.

Burly. I saw a pretty big black widow duck into a gutter crack a few weeks back.

How about Contradictory Swimming Aids Guy? Paddles+buoy+FINS...

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Eliot
blog thing - strava thing

I had tarantula lady getting out of the pool last week. Honey, shave that bikini line! Yick.

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Jen

"In order to keep a true perspective on one's importance, everyone should have a dog that worships him and a cat that will ignore him." - Dereke Bruce

We seem to have just received some new denizens that are very similar in nature..."The Social Club". This consists of 3 people who swim 50y, or perhaps just 25y, then push their goggles up on their foreheads and gab for about 3-5 minutes, clogging up 3 lanes while they yak and very rarely, swim.

Spot

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Taco cat spelled backwards is....taco cat.

My fav at the pool is an older, bald and heavily tanned (I'd say leathery) dude who takes up a whole lane to do his water walking. I know, this is a common evil of so-called fitness pools with a constant 4 foot depth. But it's his whole routine that has me shaking my head. In fact, I can't bear to look at him so I get good practice breathing to my bad side so I never have to look. Here's his schtick: he wears disgusting old green crocs and takes zillions of baby steps up and down the pool, all the while spinning his little turkey arms around like an old paddle wheeler down in NOrleans. When he gets within striking distance of the wall, he does an underwater dive, then turns around and does about 10 squats in the pool, fully immersing himself. Then down the lane again. Craziest workout I've ever seen. Guy must eat a ton because he's got a huge beer belly. Curiouser and curioser. What is it that produces all this strange behavior, and why can't people just swim in a pool rather than doing everything else imaginable in it.

How about Contradictory Swimming Aids Guy? Paddles+buoy+FINS...

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Now that's just plain funny, right there!

Spot

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Taco cat spelled backwards is....taco cat.

i think this is going to go down as one of the most popular threads in ST history, next to the hottie thread of course!

Actually, this thread does have a lot of "Hottie" elements, what with the stories about chicks swimming with their tops down and all, which unfortunately I've never seen in my roughly 8000 hrs in the pool...Oh well, maybe this afternoon...you just never know...

After having read all 600+ posts over the course of several days, I believe I have one "denizen" to add that has not been mentioned: the little kids who stand in your lane and then jump/swim out of the way at the last second before you are going to run into them. Typically their parents are somewhere around the gym, or maybe even in the pool, but not paying attention. This happened to me 3 or 4 days in a row, with the SAME kids, and finally I had just had it and so I just sprinted at the kid, grabbed him before he could get away, and picked him up and threw him over the lane rope. He stopped getting in my way after that but I was almost thrown out of the club because the parents were irate that I had done this....

Oh, I almost forgot, I had a similar experience with a kid who was shooting his water pistol at my face every time whenever I was breathing. Almost the same thing happened except this time I actually knew his Dad, who was semi-helpful...

Anyone else had similar experiences???

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"ANYONE can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

I had a similar run in tonight, kids playing in the lanes. the lifeguard was doing his best to get the kids to go elsewhere, but as kids seem to be these days, no dice.

I gave up avoiding the little s***s and put down a fast lap, straight through the pair of them :evil laugh:

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I reject your reality and substitute my own!
Adam Savage

Good job!!!! You can also puch them in the stomach if your timing is just right ==>> that's seems to work and no one can see it...

I don't object at all to kids swimming in the "adult lanes", as long as they are actually swimming. I've had some great workouts swimming with young age group swimmers...

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"ANYONE can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

We have had similar issues at my YMCA...kids playing in the only lap-lane available (on a Saturday), and the lifeguards doing jackshit about it. Its also pretty obvious that many of these kids have been dumped into the pool by mom and dad while they work out, 'cause they're nowhere to be seen. Highly annoying.

Spot

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Taco cat spelled backwards is....taco cat.

Yeah, I think this happens in any pool that has kids. The water pistol to the face was a new twist though...

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"ANYONE can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

Swim more open water with a group. Being out in the middle of a lake apparently is more 'liberating'. I have yet to see it myself as well, but there are plenty of stories about a particular woman who favors the backstroke.

I've noticed these new ones:

1. A guy who does almost his entire workout with fins and a pull bouy. Sometimes he uses paddles too, yet he still swims at MAYBE 2:30 per hundred.
2. A guy who shows up to masters, gets in the 2nd lane from the wall and proceeds to swim his own workout, which is usually a bunch of 100's. If you are in this lane, it is impossible to swim the actual workout. The thing is, the slow lane right next to him has one other person in it doing the same thing. Last Tuesday I was stuck in that lane and had to suck it up and move to a faster lane because there was no room elsewhere.
3. The girl who rotates enough to see the ceiling when she breathes but can still swim consistently under 1:15 /100.
4. The guy who's form looks like a hydrodynamic nightmare (seriously, if you can name a stroke flaw, I could point it out on this guy), yet he still manages to swim faster then a lot of people with good form.

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sometimes you just have to eat the cake

Vort - Nice stories...hard to believe anyone would swim 2:30/100 yds with fins...I mean I thought everyone in the world went at least semi-fast with fins??? And of course the obv q is why fins AND the PB...what a conflict of interest!!!! I've yet to see someone breath as badly as you described that girl but yet swim well - are you saying she holds 1:15/100 yds on say a 1:30 interval for say 10 to 20 repeats, or that she can swim 1:15 for 100 yds in a time trial??? Regarding the hydrodyne nightmare, some people are just so gifted that they can swim relatively fast despite having bad form...

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"ANYONE can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

The fins and pull buoy doesn't kick...at all, so the fins are actually pointless, and even though he has the pull buoy his legs are still at a 30* angle in the water.

And yes, she is holding that speed over intervals. We typically do a 30s base interval (SCY), but it doesn't matter what kind of set we do... she is in the 2nd fastest lane and keeps up without issue.

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sometimes you just have to eat the cake

When you say "30s base interval" do you mean leaving on 1:30???

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"ANYONE can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

I mean our interval is based off 30's per 25 yrds.

So sets of 50's are done on 1:00, 100's 2:00, 200's on 4:00, etc....

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sometimes you just have to eat the cake

Ahhh, I see...sorry, just never heard it described that way...Would you even do 500s on 10:00 and 1000s on 20:00 ==>> that would seem like too much rest, but then again not that many coaches prescribe 4 X 1000 on XX:XX or 8 X 500 on Y:YY, but I know a lot of top swimmers who do 500s and 1000s routinely. Apparently, Eric Vendt's (one of the top U.S. distance swimmers) favorite Saturday workout (i.e., just one big session instead of two) is 30 X 1000 leaving on 10:30....Get that!!!!! But, I guess if you can go 8:40 for 1000 flat out, then holding 10:00 (15% slower than race pace) isn't that hard...AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Also, surely the interval must change for breaststroke, and possibly for IM??? On the other hand, leaving on the even minute does simplify matters...

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"ANYONE can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

We only get an hour in the pool, so 300 is the longest we typically go. Even then they like to switch it up from time to time. We don't really do any stroke specific sets. Mostly 4x something where you do one IM stroke for a part of each interval (if that makes sense). If we do a set where a large part of the interval is IM, then they usually just give a rest interval instead.

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sometimes you just have to eat the cake

Slightly OT, but I thought I'd share it anyway. When I was a teenager I worked at a pool that was part of a country club. We had one member who was literally about 94 years old. We used to call him 100,000 year old man. He would swim a few laps every afternoon, doing the breast stroke. He looked like someone doing the dead man's float. Just as I was about to jump in and grab him, he'd pick his head up, gasp, and then submerge again for another 30 seconds.

Two other strange things about this guy. First, the men's bath house was behind the pool and next to the fairway of the first hole of the club's golf course. He would drive his car down along the golf course, park it immediately outside the bathhouse, get out and then change into his swimsuit beside the car. That's right, not in the bathhouse but outside, next to his car.

One time, he didn't bother to change into a swim suit at all. Just took off all his clothes, walked down to the pool and started swimming laps buck naked. That was the final straw for the country club and his swim privileges were suspended.

And now for the kicker - at the time all this was going on he was dating my grandmother.:)

This is by far my favorite thread on here, "One time, he didn't bother to change into a swim suit at all. Just took off all his clothes, walked down to the pool and started swimming laps buck naked"

I litteraly laughed out loud while reading your post.

I may have to add another type of swimmer. I'm sure this one has been added over the 2 years of this threads existence.

The " Hammer for a 25 then swim the rest of the 30 minutes completely spent" lady. I worked at the local pool for 6 years while in H/S and my freshman yr
in college. She would come in, wouldn't say a word to anyone! I opended the pool 3-5 days a week for atleast 4 years, and I spoke to her 1 time. But she would do
some static stretching (Id infact add her to the Strech Club Roster).



Then proceed to hop in the pool and swim as hard as her 75? year old body would allow her for a 25, then be pretty much spent the rest of her swim.

OR

The " Break your legs smacking the water so hard upon headfirst entry" lady
Ill keep this one short.

She would meander down to the deep end of the pool. Throw her stretched out cloth swimming cap over her head, then "dive" in and absolutely smack her legs on the surface of the water. I know for a fact it had to hurt, the sounds echoed throughout the building.

Well I'm done I have some more but they have already been identified and labeled by ST. and to list them once more would be a huge ST- FO PA

Ah, I see...well, in an hr workout you could do a 3 X 1000 or 6 X 500 set, not that I'm pushing those but just saying...I have swum with 1 hr Masters workout groups quite a bit in the past but I would usually just stay in the pool for another 30-60 min since at an hour I'm usually just starting to feel pretty good. The group I swam with the most swam from 5:30 to 6:30 and then most were at work by 7:30. I'd swim until 7:00 or 7:30 and get to work at 8:00 or 8:30, still a reasonable time at my workplace. In fact, I used to hate their typical 600 yd warmup (200sw/200kick/200 pull) which was entirely too short for me. Not that I'm that fast but I do like to swim 5000 to 7000 yds almost every day (miss maybe 1 day/month) and so I'm tired a lot and it seems to take longer to get warmed up when you're tired.

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"ANYONE can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

We have a couple of women in our open water group that tie the top of their suits around their waists for long swims. That said they are distance swimmers (channel, Lake Geneva, World cold water champs etc) so the tubbing can become a major issue.

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"How bad can it be?" - SimpleS

NICE!!! I'm guessing they do this AFTER they get into water up to their shoulders, not out on the beach...???

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"ANYONE can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."