I go to a pool that almost everyone who uses it doesn't use it for swimming, even though it's all set up for lap swimming - lane lines, black lines, etc. There are people that come for their aqua fit, etc. which I'm fine because they often share the lanes. The other day I was doing distance, and I got 150 yds into a 500, and out of the corner of my eye, I see what looks like a red beach ball floating in one of the other lanes. Another 100 yds down, and another red ball is now floating in the same lane. WTH. I prepare myself to see a couple teenagers jump into my lane or something....but finally, a middle-aged guy gets in, straddles the ball, and proceeds to "ride" one of the balls up and down the lane, while the other one just floats about. I try to keep my composure and not make eye contact with what seems to be absolute lunacy. After I finish another 500, I notice the guy is gone and his two red balls are floating aimlessly in the lane. WTH (again). Now a lady shows up to use the pool and cautiously removes the two red balls from the lane, and starts doing breaststroke. 15 minutes later, I see the ball guy come out of the men's dressing room and pick the balls up and leave. I honestly wish I made this up, but I didn't.

Was he lying on it like a kickboard?

I often have to throw water basketballs thrown by tweens with poor aim back into the family pool when I'm in the end lane. I figure it is a small price to pay for having a separate lap pool and family pool.

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http://mediocremultisport.blogspot.com

No! LOL. He was more sitting on it upright, like a chair, but wrapping his legs around it. The balls were like those exercise balls in the weight room, but smaller, so less buoyant and this made him sink while sitting on it. Sooo strange. I would have been ok with tossing the balls back into teenagers, but this was just absurd.

Bloody bandaids on the deck at the end of my lane.

No, they’re not mine, and no, I’m not picking them up, and yes, that one does look like it has some hair and scalp or something still attached to it.

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What are you people, on dope?

—Mr. Hand

I thought this was cross-post worthy

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

I had an older patient who for every apt for 20 years attempted to tell me again how he and the rest of the Canadian Army rooted the Germans out of Italy. Hard to know what to do with that. Usually I listened for a minute or two and gently steered the conversation towards the reason for the appt. Getting back to the pool we have cross over guy who also has his head so deep in the water I think he is looking backwards. Painfully slow but he gets a workout. On Sunday we had mom attempting to teach her kids to swim in the only lane available in the pool for lengths. Good times.

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They constantly try to escape from the darkness outside and within
Dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good T.S. Eliot

There’s a guy at my pool who, every time he swims, gets a communal kickboard, jams it down his swim trunks, and then leans on it to do freestyle.

I started thinking about my face being up against the same kickboard, and bought my own.

So what is lap then?

In the 12 years since I wrote this, my give-a-shitter filled up, so I no longer care.

Swimmers tend to use 'lap' and 'length' interchangeably. I'm not saying it's right, that's just the way it is. Like driving on parkways and parking on driveways. If you want down and back to be a lap and not 2 laps, I hear you. Keep fighting the good fight.

Couple months ago had my grossest moment. I do my warm up and am taking a 2 minute breather before getting into the main set. I see a gym employee intently walking to the steam room (which is on the side of the pool), so I pay attention. He opens the door and says, "ma'am.....MA'AM!" and kind of hurries in. I'm like WTF is going on? He then busts out dry heaving. Runs to get a garbage can and goes back in. Comes out dry heaving and throwing up into the can. Then says "f**k that" and just leaves. I can only assume what grossness happened in there, but his dry heaving noises and throwing up gets me nauseous. I am in the lane closest to the steam room. One interval and I just gave up because I couldn't stop thinking about what disgusting mess was in that room. Can't even imagine what the woman's condition was. She couldn't have been at risk of anything because he just left her there. But she obviously lost control of some bodily function.

This is an excellent response. Kudos.

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To breathe, to feel, to know I'm alive.

Oh.My.God.!!!

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To breathe, to feel, to know I'm alive.

"Swimmers" almost never speak in terms of laps, it's yards or meters, or more specifically SCY, SCM, or LCM.

It would be like asking a runner about which sneakers they use for jogging.

I used to swim with a friend and she'd ask what my plan was for the day. I'd tell her in meters and she'd always ask, "how many laps?". I dunno - I'm not doing the math for you.

But to know how many meters you intended to swim you would have to know ham many laps? Or you just use your distance from your watch?

My understanding was that a lap = 2 lengths of the pool

I could be wrong, I guess, because as I've said before: For a surfer, my swimming is surprisingly bad; stone-like, in fact. And by "Stone-like," I mean that in a Brian Jones kinda way

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

You canNOT just leave it at that. We need an answer

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_____________________________________
What are you people, on dope?

—Mr. Hand

For me it's neither (although I do use a watch). If I am going to swim a 500 I don't ever think in terms of 10 laps (or 20 lengths, 20 laps whatever). I count in my head every time I hit the shallow end 50, 100, 150, 200, etc until I get to 500. So sure I *could* do the conversion to say "hit the shallow end 10 times" but I stopped thinking in terms of "laps" when I was in high school because swimmers didn't think that way.

People argue about this probably more vigorously than they do about politics. "Swimmers" will insist a "lap" is a single length of the pool. The counter argument is runners would never call a lap of a track 200m stopping at the far end. After you finally defeat the "logic" that a lap returns to where you started (because only swimmers define a "lap" as ending somewhere other than where you started), you willget told that real swimmers don't think in terms of laps anyway and just count meters/yards :)

Was there a swim noodle involved? Because that's where I'm going <dryheave>

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

Can you fuckers (and I mean that in the nicest possible way) please not sully this thread with the goddamn lap/length debate? There are two dozen other threads where that can be debated. Let's leave this thread to find out what the fuck was going on with steam room lady and all the other denizens :)

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Eliot
blog thing - strava thing

Need closure on this anecdote please! Although I have a feeling I may be sorry that I asked. : P

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"You can never win or lose if you don't run the race." - Richard Butler

Yup - I count by 50. Thank god I didn't learn new math or I'd be guesstimating the whole time.

Don't know if this has been touched on in the 97 other pages of this wonderful thread, but is the guy with the whale-tail-fin-like-MASSIVE-splash-flip-turn-guy a strange denizen? Or is he just a better flip turner than me?

I mean holy peacock. Chill out dude.

he's just washing all the loogies off of the pool deck