I agree with this and what others have said. We are 5 mins from one indoor and outdoor pool and 6 mins from another indoor/outdoor. Both are great options. Like others here, that factored into where we bought our house. I have lived previously about 12 mins or so from the pool and being this much closer makes a huge difference.

1/2 a mile from work and about 2 miles from my house to the same pool. It absolutely is a factor if I moved to downsize my house I would prefer to stay in the same area, I recently moved my office to the current location though I had about a 10 mile long search area it just happened to be that I found what I consider to be a perfect place and I signed a 5 year lease with another 5 year option to lock it in. I usually go after work to swim but I'm hoping when club hours expand with Covid easing to start going in the morning.

I live 700 yards from my pool. It is wonderful, but it generally does not affect how often I swim. It just makes it incredibly convenient. I think if it were any further than maybe 15 minutes commute, it probably would affect me sometimes.

2.5km or 5 minutes by car. Being in Canada. it helps during the cold winter that I don't have too far to go.

There is a private club that has a 50 ft. pool 10 miles from my house which requires a full gym membership to use and 40 miles to a 25yd pool. From May 29th to Aug. 14th we have a 25yd outdoor pool available locally.

I miss the days of living by the pool or working on a campus with a pool.

Scott

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I have deceptive speed.........I'm slower than I look!

Just personal experience:

A healthy work/life balance and comfort with my schedule and goals is what gets me in the pool regularly. Perhaps a 30 minute one-way commute in a car before you even get to the pool would be prohibitive.

For me anything between these extremes makes no difference:

-- 10 minutes from sitting at a task to swimming: 5 minutes driving w/ no need to change (drive to and from in a suit or lack of a job to dress for after) or carefully store stuff in a locker room.
-- 30 minutes from sitting at a task to swimming: more driving and a large facility to walk through, carefully storing clothes or other items in a locker. (Then 30 more to being back to a productive task.)


Building in a run before or after if the commute is long has helped a lot, too.

I am about 13 miles away from my USMS club, which at 5:30am takes me about 15-20 min drive there and about a 30 min drive home with traffic. The drive (and the really early AM) definitely make it more difficult.

I could have access to some closer pools (LA fitness or 24hr fitness) but nowadays, its 1 person in the pool at a time, for 30 minutes, and there are no ways to reserve.

All of which to say, I wish I lived closer to a better swim option...

A brisk 15min walk. It doesn't effect how often I swim, I'd only swim 2xweek regardless but it does effect the length of my swim as I only have limited time to get there, get my swim in amd get home. I'm going to start riding an old beater bike to and from the pool to free up some more swimming time.

I live remotely in a rural area but lucky to have a nice pool 22 miles away. In the winters it can take anywhere from 35 to 40 minutes each way depending on time, weather and traffic on the roads. We are swimming 3x week with a small masters group and now added Saturday mornings. I hate the drive and getting up so early even though it's scenic and rural. It's still rough especially when th roads are snowy and slippery. We have an Endless Pool on order and hopefully it will arrive in Sept as promised. I can't do another long winter of driving to a pool so early and so far away. I dread it so much even though I do love swimming once I'm there. I think it's having to get up so early and get there when it's cold and or snowy and I just want to stay snug in my cozy log house.

Live as close to your pool as you can if you're a serious swimmer. Or get an EP.

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Death is easy....peaceful. Life is harder.

I bought a new house last summer. In the end it was down to two houses. A very large part of that choice was my new distance to swim. Five minute walk to a park with an indoor pool. If I walk to the other side of the park there is an outdoor 50. They've both been closed since I moved, but will both be open soon. I expect an extra swim each week.

I live 30 miles from the pool. It’s a pain in the butt to drive there to swim. Luckily, my 6 year old boys enjoy going to the kids section and playing while I swim. I can justify going 2-3 days a week. I’ll usually swim for an hour and hit the treadmill for 20-30 minutes. 45 minutes to the gym 1hr45min work out, 45 minutes home. A lot of time invested to swim.

I live a couple of miles from a lake that I swim in once it warms up, so the pool struggle is seasonal...luckily.

Vasa erg would do you good!

I'm back to hard Vasa erg-workouts after spending most of the COVID lockdown not doing many intervals on it and just doing easier continuous stuff, but the intervals are legit! I totally rocked my arms 2 weeks ago with 20 x 3:00 hard / 20 sec easy on the erg, but it was like an engine upgrade when I hit the pool again and everything just felt so much stronger and faster in the water - for the full 60 minute session, end-to-end. It's an awesome tool for the pool-limited folks.

I had some decent pool access in the prior month (before people started coming out and reserving all the lanes in the local pools), was even swimming up to 3x/wk in a pool, but even then it was shockingly time consuming. I'm back to 1 pool swim per week and the rest on the erg, with hard erg sets, and it's sooooo much more time efficient, and I'm in one of those phases where the erg + pool gives a better training result than all pool (the ratio changes - if I'm doing nothing but erg for weeks, it's higher yield to follow this with all pool for awhile.) Literally shockingly so, in terms of time saved - those 3 swims per week consumed close to 6 hours of training time - that's like half my weekly training hours!

I'm going to try and do a 2hr erg pull session this weekend if I can - nothing hard, just getting the long endurance built up again. It's always harder than it sounds, though, when you've been used to 45-60min workouts.