[reply]You tell him to do a 500 and he says 'that's 10 laps, right?' and you wanna throw up. Only triathletes think down and back is a 'lap.' You say 'no, it's 20 laps' and you watch his head explode.[/reply]
Actually all the old guard always called it a length and a lap, which is also the official dictionary definition...and the definition used by every single other sport in the world. My highschool coach also called it length and lap (2 lengths). Then there's the confusion because some people were defining a 50 as "a lap" regardless of the direction of swim in the pool (long way that's 1 length, short way it's 2 lengths). The coach at my pool used to call "out and back" a lap, but he said he used laps to mean a single length these days because it was too confusing to talk about lengths and laps to the 8 year old kids. Maybe that says something about swimmers. ;-D
I am definitely the "Unbalanced can't bilateral breathe" guy who doesn't do flip turns (hurts my knees) and beeps his watch at every lap (50). I also have a natural buoyancy of about 4 feet below the surface, so the deep end lanes kind of bug me. I swim there anyway and just hope I never cramp up. I leave a water bottle and a Gu gel at the end of my lane for the halfway point in a 2.4.
Actually all the old guard always called it a length and a lap, which is also the official dictionary definition...and the definition used by every single other sport in the world. My highschool coach also called it length and lap (2 lengths). Then there's the confusion because some people were defining a 50 as "a lap" regardless of the direction of swim in the pool (long way that's 1 length, short way it's 2 lengths). The coach at my pool used to call "out and back" a lap, but he said he used laps to mean a single length these days because it was too confusing to talk about lengths and laps to the 8 year old kids. Maybe that says something about swimmers. ;-D
I am definitely the "Unbalanced can't bilateral breathe" guy who doesn't do flip turns (hurts my knees) and beeps his watch at every lap (50). I also have a natural buoyancy of about 4 feet below the surface, so the deep end lanes kind of bug me. I swim there anyway and just hope I never cramp up. I leave a water bottle and a Gu gel at the end of my lane for the halfway point in a 2.4.