Deep End Guy, Walker Ladies, No Forward Progress Guy, 50 Yard Guy, Mess with Goggle Guy, Turtle Lady, Butter Knife, Bull Seal, Workout Changers, Perfume Lady, Rhythm Girl, Submarine Cigar Guy, Drafter Man, Head Never Goes Under the Water Guy, 300 Lb Doing water Aerobics, Equipment Guy, College Swim Team Girl, Old Fat Dude who Sits in the Hot Tub, Old Hallway Guy, Old Weird Stroke Guy, Side Splitter, 1st in the Water Guy, Old School Russian, the Singing Guy, Inappropriate Colored Suit Guy, Tadpole, Horrific Hand Cross-Over Person, Dirty Old Camera Man, Anti-Social Guy, Oil Slick Women, Straight Up Side Stroker, Snorkel Guy, Colgne Guy, Therapy Lane Blabberer, Deep End Phobia Woman, Boozing Floozies, Pregnant Man, Bathtub Japanese Ladies, Newspaper in the Hot tub Guy, Gay Duo, Sex Couple, Synchronized Swimming Gals, Lane Crosser, Rapidly Balding Lady, Refuse to Split the Lane Guy, the Snow Angel, Underwater Aquaman, Locker Room Swim Ready Guy, The Claw, Abacus Lady, National Geographic, Miss One Woman Party, Foreign 25 yard Guy, I Want to Race You Guy, Got it Flaunt it Guy, Freaky Flip Turn Gal, Saggy Swimsuit Guy, 90 Year Old Flipper/Paddle Guy, Tattoo Man, Natural Girl, Strange Bikini Woman, One Fin, TI Balance Drills Guy, Head Above Water Freestyle Woman, Beef Jerky, AquaBiddies, 100 Mile Dog Paddler, Transparent Woman, Slow Lorris, Miss Fit, Territorial Man , The Procrastinator, White Water, Forgot to Wax Lady, 5 minutes per length Lady, Way Too Fast Triathlon Guy, Zen Lady, The Magician, I don’t Know How to Swim Kid, Used to be Great Guy, Depth Charge, The Stare Down Person, Weird Instructor, Only Swims Breast Stroke Girl, I Will Swim as Slow As I want guy, Will Not You Pass Guy, The Snake, The Pear

If only we could put them all in a pool at the same time, serve drinks and watch the misery occur, it just might be entertaining.

Nicely done, "Guy Who Compiled the Denizens Thread" ;-)

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Mr. Uncaptured External Costs

Fossil carbon is planetary poison.

Excellent topic. Pool denizens are like the "collective unconscious" of all pools everywhere.



There's a guy who appears at my pool whose workout includes upside down situps in which he turns over in the water, hooks his lower legs over the edge of the pool and sits up (so his hear breaches the surface when he's fully crunched).

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I guess I'll throw my observations into the (no pun intended) pool:

Mr. Jackhammer flip turn - Can't swim well, but nails the flip turn, making sure when his legs hit the water, he makes the loudest smack. Can't wait for him to get a little too close to the wall.

Kamikazi Entry Guy - Jumps from the deck into your lane just as you're approaching the wall. Surprise!!!

Lazy Flipper - You know, a correct flip turn has a horizontal axis of rotation. This guy has a vertical axis. Kind of dog paddles around to reverse direction, then pushes off of wall.

This Guy Must Like Me (I Hate Him!) - I'm the fastest swimmer, usually by a considerable margin. Most of the time there's just enough people that most lanes have two that split the lane. That works fine for me. The next person to join the swim has his choice of several lanes which will, of course have to implement circle swimming. He should choose a lane of two people near his ability. Does he? Noooooo. He chooses my lane. Happens more often than not. Now I'm circle swimming with two (considerably slower) people and passing one every 50 yards or so. BTW: This late entry guy is also one of those that doesn't concede for a pass. That makes passing down the middle interesting, when the other guy is apporachng from the opposite side. I usually start my kicking - it's closer to their speed plus I usually do a lot more dolphin kicking, just to annoy them.

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Proud member of FISHTWITCH: doing a bit more than fish exercise now.

Ok, at one pool we have the lifeguards that set the clock 15 minutes ahead of schedule so they can leave early-yet they show up late-heaven forbid you mention how every other clock in the building is 15 minutes slower than theirs.
Next at the other pool I frequent we have the slightly psycho locker room guy. This guy rants and raves about some really weird stuff-never talking to anyone other than his imaginary friends- e.g ."I told that fu#&%r if he looked at me again I was going to kill him." to other slighlty less violent drug related ramblings. The funny thing is I have never seen him in the pool, only in the locker room.

Aloha,
Matt

Possibly related to "Stare Down Person", there was "World's Oldest Two-Year Old", who, when forced to share a lane, would kick really hard and make a big splash every time I passed by.

Then there was "Snot Lady", who blew her nose into her hand at the end of every lap. (How can you even have that much snot???)

I've also found that the two dead giveaways that someone is a triathlete are: 1) a Seal Mask, or 2) Fins. I usually try to strike up a conversation with anyone swimming with either a Seal mask or fins to see if they are a triathlete. Haven't been wrong yet!

My favourite is fetal position flip turn guy. In the summer I had to swim at a public pool instead of the McGill pool. The adult swim was in a small 4 lane pool because the wicked fast 10 year olds were using the big one. Because there were only 4 lanes, if you were able to swim a whole lap without stopping then you got to go in the fast lane! This lane was full of elderly men who didn't flip turn. Instead they would swim underwater to the wall, fold themselves into the fetal postion, use their arms to pivot themselves around and then push off. I had to wait in line at the wall so that each guy could have his turn at the fetal position turn around.

This is great! I was in france for a little vacation (3 weeks around Nice) in May. This is what I had written on our team blog... Swimming rules in france.

We hit the pool yesterday. A nice 25m outdoor pool in the big town about 10km away. The pool rules are interesting.

There are no lockers, but you give all your clothes to a lady who's job is to be your locker.

Rule #1 is that women shall wear bikinis, men shall wear thongs.

The 8 lanes are set up like this. Lanes 1-3 contain a random set of swimmers doing breastroke and having a good chat. There is an old man flailing his arms in lane 2 to watch out for. Lanes 3 and 4 contain a 2:00 (per 50) swimmer and a lady basically floating in the midle of the pool with a kick board. Lanes 5,6 and 7 are again a random selection of swimmers and kickers, but these are more serious swimmers and kickers because they have huge fins or paddles. Still swimming 2:00 per 50. Lanes 6,7 and 8 is a bit more orderly, no rotating around the lane line, you just pick a spot and run up and down. My lane is shared by a lady kicking with fins on her back (with a kickboard) who closes her eyes and careens through everybody between lanes 4 and 8. Lane 8 has another swimmer who can actually swim. Plus a lady doing jazzercize with fins.

Rule #2. When you are done swimming, get out of the water, take off your top, and have a smoke while you sunbathe. The corolary to this rule is that those that shant take off their top, shall.

All in all it was good to get in the water, even with the traffic and the waves and the overly warm water, a peak out over the pool deck showed an amazing little town in the maritime alps.

I'm 50 Yard Guy too. Unfortunately, it's because I'm in such bad shape. I don't race anyone though.

THIS IS ANOTHER FORM OF REFUSE TO SPLIT THE LANE GUY!

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Check out my IMLP Janus Charity Challenge Page
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Man, I used to do the 5:30 to 10:30 AM lifeguard shift at the local Y. I thought it was just me that came up with all these names!

• Equipment Guy, I like to call "Johnny Appratus"
• We had "Loose Suit Sallys" , Ladys that bought suits on the sale rack regardless of the size.
• "Snorkel Bobs" The guys with snorkels that just bob up and down.
• "Heart Attack Man" I would usually go on break when he showed up.
• "The Gypsy lady" 350 lbs with the walker, did not speak any english, but would give me chocolate every time she came.
• "Pool Temperature Nazi" This guy really was in the Nazi party, Hilter Youth I think! Never belives the pool thermometer. Brought his own one time!
• The Flipper Lady. Comes out of the locker room with flippers on already. Did she wear them to the pool?
• I almost forgot "Guy that has full head of hair in the hallway but is bald a Q- ball in the pool."
• "Can I join your workout guy?"

This is the best thread I have seen on ST! Really hits home.

From time to time we have "wrinkly old lady swimming slowly" in our pool

Actually she's the mother of a friend of mine (and now a friend of mine too) She's 87 and every time she 'ages up' she checks the record books to see what swimming records she can set! She's as competitive as hell. Currently she holds 9 National Records for swimming, for women over 85. OK, she's older than dirt but she's out there hammering at max heart rate doing what she does. (How many national records do YOU hold? :-)

She even has the 3rd fastest 1500m freestyle time in the world for women over 85. She's currently chilling out until she gets to 90 so she can go even faster and hopefully set a world record! Her 1500m time is about 48 minutes from memory. Not killer fast, but a long time for an old bird to be splashin' around in the pool.

She was going to make an attempt to be the worlds oldest woman skydiver. She did a tandem jump and loved it. The instructor said they would let her do it if she could jump off a table and not fall or break anything. One day her daughter caught her jumping off the chair as a warmup and made her stop! She got on top of the table a few days later and she said it kinda scared her (after her practices off the chair) so took her daughters advice and decided to give it a miss. Regardless, she is a real hoot to be around and not your typical oldie at all.

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TriDork

"Happiness is a myth. All you can hope for is to get laid once in a while, drunk once in a while and to eat chocolate every day"

Has anyone mentioned the dork who jumps in while you are at the other end doing a flip turn and proceeds to swim down the middle of the lane so you swim right into them?

My current problem in master's swim is my lane mates always want me to lead. Apparently they think I am kidding around and can really swim fast or something. We're always trying to get someone else to lead, its pathetic.

That is awesome!! I hope I'm just like her at that age!

She sounds really cool.

Spot

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

Has anyone ever wondered what these people call you? I wonder all the time. I've even gone so far as to name myself from the viewpoint of someone else, were I able to actually watch myself swim and critique it. Perhaps we too, the namers of various denizens are denizens oursleves.

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Partially-Hydrogenated

"My current problem in master's swim is my lane mates always want me to lead. Apparently they think I am kidding around and can really swim fast or something. We're always trying to get someone else to lead, its pathetic."

Same thing happens in my lane at masters swimming. Nobody wants to lead and we all come up with excuses like, "I already did a 2 hour run this morning", "my lower back is sore", "I'm tapering", etc., etc. Our masters coach has nicknamed us the "complain lane".

Mark

i think they call me "shaved-leg tan-lines poser"

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http://www.theninjadon.blogspot.com

"The bicycle riders drank much wine, and were burned and browned by the sun. They did not take the race seriously except among themselves." -- Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

"Slow Tubby Guy"....that's me. Or maybe "weird camera in the pool guy" for the time I tried to get video of myself underwater...

Spot

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

Yup, she's a really cool lady that's for sure. She's got a slight scratchiness/stammer to her voice now, but she still drives herself around the country visiting friends and is a much better driver than her daughter. She's a blast after a couple of wines and starts telling risque stories from her youth. She's a delight to have around and certainly not one of those funny smelling old people you stick inteh corner. I hope that if I live that long, I'm as cool as her.

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TriDork

"Happiness is a myth. All you can hope for is to get laid once in a while, drunk once in a while and to eat chocolate every day"

A fun one to watch is the guy who touches the wall with one hand, then draws his other hand to the wall. He then turns around, releases the wall with both hands and flings his arms towards the other end of the pool as he pushes off with his feet. It makes a big splash like a boat does in a sharp turn.

I also have a friend who doesn't swim as well, but he tries to keep up with me on the middle 100 of my 200 repeats. He waits until I do a 50 then takes off just in front (we're splitting lanes) or up to 5 seconds in front of me and then tries to make it to the other end before me. I usually catch him, so he adjusts his take-off time. He then gets to rest through my last 50, my interval and the first 50 of the next 200. So, I play games and slog the first 50 and ramp up the 100 and recover on the final 50. It's all good, though as I get to practice drafting, passing and breathing right next to his thrashing feet.

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Proud member of FISHTWITCH: doing a bit more than fish exercise now.

"Has anyone ever wondered what these people call you?"

I'm probably the "too rude to stop and chat" guy. I don't know how many times I'm in the middle of a set with 5-10 sec rests, and as I'm leaving I'll hear the start of a sentence.

Actually, "deep end guy" at our pool stopped me the other day because some lady had moved into my lane to split it with me. He said "be careful, she's not wearing goggles". I said "OK" and started to take off. He grabbed me again, and said "I'm serious!" What did he expect??

As I was resting one lap she says to me really seriously, "I'm trying to hug the lane line!" Like her life was in jeopardy.

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Note to self: increase training load.

Follow the Breast stroking women guy.

This guy swims freestyle 2 feet behind a hot women doing the breaststroke,looking straight ahead. He can obviously swim faster than the women,but he's enjoying the view too much to pass her.Very Creepy.

Guy at my pool who swims 3500+ yards on his back with fins.He's there every day,and i've never seen him swim another stroke.

<did you ever notice how scary some jackolanterns are? I saw one last night thats eyes were just gleaming... it's expression said "HAHAHA I AM GOING TO GET YOU!" not all jackolanterns, but some. >

Dont worry Tigerchik.I will protect you from those bad old Jack O Lanterns.

I have been a swimmer, h.s. school coach, ymca coach, master's triathlete swimmer, summer swim club manager. I have ran into all of these at one time or another.

My two favorites:

1. "Doesn't know how to wear a speedo guy." Invariably always pulled up way past his waist. I swear to god there should be directions on how to wear one.
2. "World revolves around me lap swimmer guy." I was at a YMCA championshiop meet coaching. Hundreds of athetes, coaches, and officials were there. Guy comes in his suit expecting to swim and raises a huge stink because his lap swim time was cancelled because of the meet. It was quite a sight