The walkers combined with the slow leisure breast-strokers.....did a New Year's Day swim, 2009 Open yds. Two of us decided to just break it into 20x100 on 2:00 - easy and low-key with both of us finishing around 1:20 or so. About 4 - 6 people/lane, all getting along well. This lady in our lane, swimming excruciatingly slow, breaststroke, backstroke (all over the lane) ignoring the lifeguard who had been trying to get her attention since before we started. I keep incessantly dragging on the lady's feet and going around her whenever I could (because of course she wasn't stopping at the wall - even if I had practically pulled her toes off). She just didn't get the picture.....I finally pushed off on a flipturn and actually swam under her, popped up right in front and kept going. She then yelled at the lifeguard for not getting her attention and telling her to move. She stomped off all angry and huffy. So the last 8 100's were smooth and friendly. I haven't seen her at the pool since.

The lifeguard just laughed, she had hit the lady on the head with her bouy 3 times...how do you NOT notice that?

And I love the guys that will turn themselves inside out to beat or keep up with the chick. Give it up, you're hurting yourself and she's just faster.

Or whining, can't we make it shorter or easier guy at Master's practice. Can we use fins? Or can we just do a 25 w/o boards? Or can we have an extra 5 seconds to make the interval even? You have a coach telling you when to go....quit it.

My favorite are the people that have no concept of swimming - the ones that look at everyone afterwards and say "You're a fantastic swimmer!" That just makes everyone feel good. And when they swim with you it helps them, too.

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AW

Sunday afternoon at the Y. All 6 lanes occupied by two slow swimmers (maybe 1 who could do a 100 (scy) in 1:30), splitting all lanes. I go over to the lifeguard to request she assist in moving some folks to a lane where they can circle "swim". At the same time, a guy who looked even older and more haggard than I was about to request the same. After some discussion and analysis, we figure out to move enough people so we could swim. More Old and Haggard is a Brit: accent and bad teeth and all.

Me: I'm thinking of doing a bunch of 100s on 1:30.
Brit: That sounds great! You do Masters?
Me: About 20 years ago.
Brit: What's your best 100 time?
Me: 51.
Brit: Short course or long course?
Me: Short course.
Brit: Mine's 53. Long course meters.

He ended up doing about 22 of the 25 straight I did; at 20 I told him I was going to descend. Last one was 1:09, and he was right at or ahead of me (we were in adjacent lanes at that point).

You never know by looking...

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"Go yell at an M&M"

I bet its somewhere between a lot and a metric shitload

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I reject your reality and substitute my own!
Adam Savage

A friend of mine at masters can do super long kicks off the wall and regularly goes under us as he is also the fastest person there. One time we flipped at the same time and underestimated how far he was and popped back up before he had cleared me, I ended up with a face full of the back of his speedo...

The denizen of the pool I always see, is the so called "Super Dad", in the weight lifting room at the pool. He is usually a slightly pudgy man, wearing dress socks pulled all the way up. His typical workout involves using every machine in the gym exactly once, at full out maximum effort with poor form and/or incorrectly, while minimizing any time spent between machines and stations. At no point does this program allow for stretching, warmup or aerobics. The workout schedule involves only one or two work outs per year, usually in January.

That, is hilarious. I'm not sure I could have witnessed that and resumed the workout or made any intervals. And you poor thing, had no way to avoid it!

That made my evening.

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AW

Hilarious! I've only just begun to read this thread (10 pages down, of 28), and I am dieing at the hilarity of some of these people. What are some people thinking, they are the only people in the world?

Anyways, I have to ask, what is it with older folks and swimming with snorkels? I mean, it's not like it's impossible to breath and swim at the same time. Why the snorkel?

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my triathlon/motorsports blog

That is too funny. I'd made my way through about half of this thread and recognized many of the same people from my pool, but with the exception of the underwater hockey crowd. Yes, some Saturday mornings, we lap swimmers lose about 1/3 of the pool to a group of underwater hockey players. Who knew there even was such a thing. And though it definitely doesn't help my form, I can't help but peek over during laps from time to time to see how the hockey game is going....

Yes! I love it when this thread returns. The latest and greatest at my local swimming pool is a lady who comes in and does about 500 yards of breaststroke. And it is the most infuriating, frustrating, hilarious, embarassing display of swimming I've ever seen.

First, each stroke propels her about a 1-2 feet MAX. And sometimes it really looks like she hasn't gone an inch. So it takes her, hmmm...maybe 45 minutes to swim her 500 yards.

The best part is that she doesn't wear goggles and closes her eyes. Which gives her no sense of direction or any awareness of where she is in the lane. I've seen her slowly and methodically zig-zag between lane lines the full length of the pool and then run smack head first into the wall.

My god! It's like a train wreck. Every time I see her, I just stand there on the edge of the pool, mesmerized by the awfulness.

I swim at a Y which is great during my lunch break because I always have my own lane and once in awhile I am the only person in the pool. When I swim in the evenings there are only two lanes open because the rest are occupied by swim teams. It is during my evening swims that I have encountered a couple strange folk.

1. This guy is the stranger of the two and I only saw him in the pool a couple of times. I shared a lane with a guy who would just hang out on one end of the lane and then he would do a quick sprint to the other side and hang out for another few minutes. I would usually get about 150yards in before he would bolt down to the other side. Then he threw curve ball into the mix and suprised the hell out of me by swimming under the water and went right under me(we were going in opposite directions). The guy would also try to strike up conversations with me as I was trying to get my laps in.

2. Snorkel man. I have shared a lane with this guy a couple times and he always makes me nervous because I risk getting a hand or fin in the face. The guy swims with a snorkel and fins and does this crawl type breast stroke thing with his arms. I always hug the line when I pass him because I dont want to get hit.

At our gym pool I am now aware of the regulars. We have an assortment of walkers, "aqua aerobics" social hour users, thrashers and slow breastrokers.
The most interesting swimmer is the zig zagger. Our pool has no lane lines, and her preferred method of swimming is to push off from one side of the pool and to swim diagonally to the other taking a couple of strokes in the process, she then pushes off diagonally to the other side. She is capable of swimming laps as I have seen her do so, I have no idea of why she prefers to swim in this fashion.
This is topped only by the older gentleman wearing a speedo who swims 25 meters and then stops at the end to stick his hand down the front of said speedo and adjust his scrotum, before swimming another 25-50 and repeating the procedure.

Kevin

I swim mostly in the pool in our condo complex andthere is an older gent I see occassionally that comes down in a full wetsuit, mask and snorkel (no fins) and proceeds to very slowly circumnavigate around the outside of the pool a few times using what can only be described as a very weird front crawl stroke - the hands do not go past his head when entering the water. He does this for max 10-15 minutes and leaves. The strangest part is the full wetsuit. You see I live in Singapore and the water temperature rarely gets below 25 C, especially in the pool....

Yesterday I was at the gym pool (25m) in a lane with two other swimmers ,one was breastroking and other a pull session. Mr Breastroker left the lane and I was catching the pull guy every 75m. I overtook him 5m into the length and he then proceeded to sprint so that I couldn't get past. Since we were swimming clockwise and I was on his right I assumed it would resolve itself at the wall. Oh no, he decided to elbow me and try to knock me out of his way! I just sprinted for 15m and then kept at his pace but 25m ahead.

What goes on in these people's heads? He finished 10 minutes later and decided to try and stare me out from the Jacuzzi for he remaining 30 minutes! Weirdo.

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"How bad can it be?" - SimpleS

This morning I got to become a strange denizen. As part of my Field Experience in Exercise Mgt. class I am required to attend certain group exercise classes and this week it was Water Aerobics. 5 old ladies, one girl from my class and me, the pasty white shaved down uncoordinated dope. It was FANTASTIC! By sheer good luck I ended up next to mothball lady and got to inhale that for an hour. And I only have to wait 3 more weeks to go back.

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Brawndo's got what plants crave. Brawndo's got electrolytes. And that's what plants crave. They crave electrolytes. Which is what Brawndo has. And that's why plants crave Brawndo. Not water, like from the toilet.

They drive me nuts too (they also exist in my tri club swim). Sadly I'm probably as maddening as I'm the polar opposite - the show up early/thrilled to be swimming at 6:30am/c'mon everyone lets do another 100m!/oh yay it's butterfly day person. I don't know why some one in my lane hasn't tried to choke me with a pull buoy yet.

And she still smelt of mothballs in the water? Holy Crap, that's amazing waterproof mothballs, surely there's a market for that? Somewhere?

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"How bad can it be?" - SimpleS

Ah-hah! Finally a way to prevent those stinking underwater moths from eating my laundry! ;-)

Me neither....but we need people like you...otherwise who can we hate enough to get through that last 25 of fly/back/whatever is hurting the most???

I secretly turn into that person, too, from time to time. But it's usually when the distance stuff shows up. THAT really gets people annoyed.

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AW

It doesn't wash off if you never get wet above your 3rd rib, I would say chest but with them that's a little hard to define. Maybe it wasn't moth balls, maybe it was just old lady smell.

W-A-T-E-R A-E-R-O-B-I-C-S

Also, do I include this in my training log?

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Brawndo's got what plants crave. Brawndo's got electrolytes. And that's what plants crave. They crave electrolytes. Which is what Brawndo has. And that's why plants crave Brawndo. Not water, like from the toilet.

I finally got to meet "conspiracy theory guy" in the hot tub post workout the other day. He regaled me with tales of corporate greed, 9/11 conspiracies and gerneral evil in the world that was preventing him from collecting worker's compensation and disability. Apparently someone in the British Columbia Work Safe office is preventing him from getting his due and may very well have caused 9/11.

Other "facts" ... someone named Rubenstein is evil, also involved in 9/11. Chlorine leaches into your brain, but he is immune. Not eating for 28 straight days makes your vision better.

Interesting soak.

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Proud member of the MSF (Maple Syrup Mafia)

Either way, I think the phrase is "Eww"!

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"How bad can it be?" - SimpleS

Nice! Did you get any valuable tips?

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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

How does the tinfoil feel under your swim cap? ;-)

I am not a lifetime swimmer: I got started in swimming late in life because in a tri, the swim gets you to the bike and run in a manner similar to the way an entree gets you to the dessert. However, I do get to the pool regularly enough to have noticed one denizen that has me scratching my head. She is "Neoprene Nana." Neoprene Nana is an older, rail-thin lady who swims in a properly heated 25yd pool with a full scuba-type wetsuit on every day the pool is open. Without a word to anyone, she swims freestyle down to the end and back (something like a 2 minute 50yd) and then, when she arrives at the start, she shifts one bead on the string of well-worn, wooden counting beads she has at the end of the pool. Then she slowly turns around and heads back down for another 50. After Neoprene Nana gets to the last bead, she silently gets out of the pool and departs. She is not overtly offensive, but she does have one annoying trait: If someone is standing at the end waiting to get her attention to share a lane with her, she studiously ignores him or her until she is done. I guess she is "in the zone" or perhaps she is working so hard to move the thick suit that she is too tired to acknowledge. Either way, Neoprene Nana is certainly a strange denizen.

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“Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work” - Thomas Edison, Inventor

Easy solution to that, which I have employed a number of times. Let her see you twice, the second time with your legs dangling in the water. Third time, get in the lane with her, obviously stay to one side, and start swimming. You'll either end up sharing the lane, or crashing into each other. Given that I am 6'0 and 215 lbs, I always end up sharing the lane. No one wants to crash into me... It does help that my fitness center has a mandatory lane sharing policy.

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my triathlon/motorsports blog