[reply]Sorry to rain on your parade and to be unoriginal while doing it. May I suggest the following amendment?
Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed.
Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must outrun the gazelle, or it will starve.
It doesn't matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle:

WHEN THE SUN COMES UP, YOU'D BETTER BE RUNNING.

This should suffice in keeping nitpickers such as myself at bay.[/reply]

no, the nits are much worse than that..
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/gforum.cgi?post=1028244#1028244

anyone who's unfortunate enough to spend time in the American corporate world is not enchanted by that little homily..

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"It is a good feeling for old men who have begun to fear failure, any sort of failure, to set a schedule for exercise and stick to it. If an aging man can run a distance of three miles, for instance, he knows that whatever his other failures may be, he is not completely wasted away." Romain Gary, SI interview

"I think I was the 'Lifeguard Who is So Little That's There's No Way She Can Save My Fat Ass.' "


LOL! That was my sister too!

[reply]
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[/reply]

I have been this guy.. ahem. My point was that posting the meet time would have helped my scheduling, harrumph.

otherwise I'm 'wide-arm wally', r arm windmills when I get tired, used to annoy the dickens out of 'no-share suzy' who always wanted the lane to herself..

[reply]"3) The overweight lifeguard who walks the deck like a prisoncamp guard...and always stares at me when I come out to the pool or walk back to the locker room"

Why do skimpily clad women think it strange that men might stare(within reason)?[/reply]

I am a he and the lifeguard is a she.

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Proud Founder of the Jamis Mafia- Daring to be different.

[reply]House,
You're in L-ville. Do you swim at MTM? If so, we're probably talking about the same singing guy. Also, I think I know which lifeguard you're talking about. He sometimes does martial arts moves as he patrols the deck.[/reply]

I do swim at MTM and UofL. It probably is the same singing guy. The lifeguard is a girl, rather large, marches back and forth on the thing that splits the one side of the pool into two 25m sections and often stops to watch me...shudder.

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______________________________________________________

Proud Founder of the Jamis Mafia- Daring to be different.

Re:
"Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed.
Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must outrun the gazelle, or it will starve.
It doesn't matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle..."

If you're the gazelle, lay low, for the lion will only chase those running.

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

One guy at my pool is the combo plate:
Butt-Crack Bobby - suit too small that... well, you get it (details withheld to help keep your chocolate milk off of your keyboard.) He also wears a peach-colored suit, looks like no suit at all. He also has an All-American Class 1, Grade A beer gut; Huge and hairy. Belly button so big, something might be hibernating in there. He's actually not a bad swimmer, though.

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

Hehe, me too. I was also that 90 lb lifeguard watching the other strange swimming denizens.

That doesn't surprise me at all. There are definitely some characters in this town.

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http://trainingoferic.blogspot.com/

[reply][.reply]"3) The overweight lifeguard who walks the deck like a prisoncamp guard...and always stares at me when I come out to the pool or walk back to the locker room"

Why do skimpily clad women think it strange that men might stare(within reason)?[./reply]

I am a he and the lifeguard is a she.[/reply]


Hmmm. OK I guess that is a bit odd...unless you're perfect physique tri guy.

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"Just HTFU and out sprint whoever tries to take 96th from you. This is a RACE, not a cupcake walk! " -Fungshuay@ST

[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.

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I refuse to give in. Lap definitely implies that you arrive back in the same place you started. If the swimmers who swim more than freestyle wish to dumb things down for their compatriots, so be it. If they wish to make fun of triathletes for using the terms correctly so be it. I refuse to give into peer pressure from people in speedos.

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Arch

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"The code of the schoolyard (ST), Marge! The rules that teach a boy to be a man. Let's see. Don't tattle. Always make fun of those different from you. Never say anything, unless you're sure everyone feels exactly the same way you do." -- Homer

[reply]People that can't laugh at themselves are just a-holes so-
[/reply]

agreed, although I need to remind myself sometimes.

If I had to, I'd probably call myself The Breacher. Often I let out the last little bit of air in my lungs before taking my next breath. While I can't be sure, I think sometimes as I turn my head to breathe, the force of the air pushes the water up in a big splash like a whale breaking the surface. I've had a few others for myself over the years, many commenting on my crappy flip turns or some other "feature" of my stroke, but this is the one i come back to the most.

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Partially-Hydrogenated

Well, much has been said already. About the only thing I can add is:

Dirty Guy: Local vagabond that looks like a bum, rides his mtn bike (with 100 plastic grocery bags hanging off it) around town and to the pool. Changes from his street clothes to his swimsuit and jumps in. No shower. The pool is his bathtub.

Asian Invasion: Usually come in groups of 2 to 3 university girls/women. Walk out of locker room with suits, caps, goggles already on. Think nothing of jumping right in your lane, even when other lanes are unoccupied, and proceed to "swim" straight at you, apparently oblivious that you are there. Said asian "swims" about halfway across pool and then hangs onto lane lines to avoid drowning.

I have one, let's call him Poolfan. No one knows his name, he just shows up and starts yelling stuff to the people who are actually swimming. "You are fat!" or "What the hell are you doing swimming with a fuel belt?" He never really enters the water, just sits in a chair on the side of the pool for hours a day regaling those who will listen about his 32 second 50m times. Everytime you go swim, he is there. Some days he brings a Curious George mask and starts referring to himself as Lapfan. Then one day he is gone. Vanished (or banished). No goodbyes, no blazes of glory. But one day you are talking to a friend and they start to tell you about some weird guy that started showing up at their pool and talking about ingrown hair on his private parts....

Confession, I sometimes do the "seal guy" thing. I also have been know to sit crosslegged on the bottom of the pool just because i can. Other than that I am usually 'guy who swims a 100, and then rests for 5min" Lately I have been "guy who doesn't come to the pool anymore" :>)

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Jim

**Note above poster works for a retailer selling bikes and related gear*

Emphysema Ed- Just saw him today pulling into the parking lot smoking a cigarrette and later followed me onto the pool deck. Only mention it because it's rare these days. I'm 51 and have lived through this fascinating cultural change. When I was young, most adults smoked. Later, I saw it banned from the workplace first and later public places. To see a smoker going to a health club looks weird now.

[reply]
Emphysema Ed- Just saw him today pulling into the parking lot smoking a cigarrette and later followed me onto the pool deck. Only mention it because it's rare these days. I'm 51 and have lived through this fascinating cultural change. When I was young, most adults smoked. Later, I saw it banned from the workplace first and later public places. To see a smoker going to a health looks weird now. [/reply]

Try swimming in Germany. Tons of smokers hangout just outside of the indoor pools. The indoor pools are a big social scene and packed with heads up, nearly vertical swimming, breast strokers. Very difficult to get in a workout with 10-12 people in your lane. And this in a city with 280,000 people, 10 indoor pools and 5 long course complexes.

[reply][.reply][..reply]"3) The overweight lifeguard who walks the deck like a prisoncamp guard...and always stares at me when I come out to the pool or walk back to the locker room"

Why do skimpily clad women think it strange that men might stare(within reason)?[../reply]

I am a he and the lifeguard is a she.[./reply]


Hmmm. OK I guess that is a bit odd...unless you're perfect physique tri guy.[/reply]

I most certainly am not!

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______________________________________________________

Proud Founder of the Jamis Mafia- Daring to be different.

The denizens in this thread are mostly U.S.-types. Asia has its own set of unique denizens. Singapore has a huge number of beautiful 50m pools but few people actually swim in them. Pools are places to escape the heat. The open swim times have no lanes so you can imagine the chaos that ensues. My experience is with the two local university pools. The majority of people in the pool are undergrads who stand at the ends or sides of the pool chatting (the pools have a ledge all the way around so you can stand). There is lots of girl-boy cuddling going on. There is the boyfriend-teaching-girlfriend (or vice versa) to swim. There are pool width swimmers crashing into pool length swimmers crashing into pool diagonal swimmers crashing into directtion-less beginning backstrokers. All of this happens matter of factly, with no aggression (except for the time when big-water-polo-guy insisted on swimming widths, crashed into me and said “do you want to go outside” – it was an outdoor pool). All of this is supervised by very strict (iimagine a typical Singapore-style rule list of the thousand things that are not allowed) and grouchy 50 year old professional lifeguards who do not tolerate any diving, jumping, shoes on deck, etc.

This thread is exactly what ST is all about...the shared experience.

Glad to see I'm not the only one who swims with these characters. Here's a pool story for you, from three years ago:

I'm at my local pool, a large 25M, taking a breather between sets. A guy over in the other fast lane (young guy, about 26, relatively clean-cut and actually looks like a swimmer) is also taking a breather, and says to me "Wow, it's really crowded here. I keep getting hit." I say "Must be all the triathletes practicing their swim starts.

In the change-room, guy asks me if I'm a triathlete. Has bike questions as he's thinking of getting into the sport. I'm cordial and polite, but not overly friendly or chatty as I need to get to work. Walking out the changeroom down the stairs to the parking lot, he's suddenly behind me, asks me if I'm going to work. I answer with a curt "Yes", thinking "where the hell else would I be going at 8:15 on a Wednesday?

Walk to my car, start the car, and have the door open as I'm sitting in the front seat, getting my act together. He appears next to me, looking very nervous, and asks:

"Excuse me, if you have five minutes, I'd like to give you a blowjob."

While utterly shocked, I'm also totally calm. I tell him "No thanks, I'm engaged and straight.". And I drive off. Never saw him at the pool again.

My wife thinks this is the funniest story she's ever heard.

How about "THE WHISTLER GUY"...the guy who whistles some random crap while in the locker room and while on the pool deck both before and after he swims! So annoying. He probably whistles underwater too, but thank god we cannot hear him!

dd

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http://www.theundergroundcoach.com

Another reason I never shower at health clubs.

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I'll be what I am
A solitary man

Hilarious...although I have to say the end of the story didn't end like I thought it would!

Is that included in the standard membership?

Arch