Be me. Swimming by far weakest event. Training for Lubbock 70.3 (June 24). Goal is sub 35 mins.

Swimming at YMCA. Slamming hard 150 yard sets. Feeling fast. Feeling like I'm starting to level up..

Big boi wants to share the lane. No problem.

Big boi jumps in. Notice he sucks more than I do at swimming. Don't care. Focused on nailing time goals for final 150 before cool down.

Final 150. All out effort. 75 yards left in the interval. I got this.

BAM! Disorientation. What just happened?!?

Big boi doing backstroke. Obvious he whacked me in my ear swimming by. Hurts so bad. Dizzy. Hurts even worse when I put it back in the water. Have to walk to end of pool to get out.

Still dizzy. Big boi comes over and tries to apologize. "Bro, do you even know how to backstroke?"

Ear hurts next day. Go to doctor. Doctor says busted ear drum. Can't swim anytime soon. Sigh.

E-gads! Is that permanent??

---

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

No. I have blown each eardrum about 10 times each. (I have a tiny tiny pit next to my ear drums that save ONE drop of water and vacuum it in there so it doesnt come out leading to infections, and other sports related injuries). It heals. Depending how big the hole is. One of mine didn't heal for months and they almost did a patch surgery - they also almost scraped the scar tissue off the eardrum to smooth it out.

other than some high pitch noises I can't hear in my right ear - all is well!

SHEESH. I feel terrible for you. I hope that gets better quick. I had another interesting session at the pool yesterday. I decided to join a health center that has a lap pool and also a separate warmer "water aerobics" pool....with the hopes that I'd see mostly swimmers in the lap pool. Yesterday, I determined this hope has slightly faded. A lady got in the lap pool with a flourescent yellow inflatable donut/innertube and proceeded to lay down on it and use her hands as paddles to go up and down the lap lane on an inner tube. Why why why do people comes to a pool to exercise never actually want to get wet??? I've never heard of this being used as physio either, so if I'm mistaken, let me know.

I'm so excited to finally have one of these! Actually, three of them. Two from today, one from yesterday's swim:

1) The Kicker. This guy is sharing my lane, swimming a head-out freestyle (no goggles needed) that was pretty interesting. Then he grabs a kickboard and goes to town with it. Except, he's kicking like crazy (I see him underwater as I pass him), and just really not moving all that much. He goes so slow (25scy pool) that I leave with him, do 100, rest 30 seconds, do another 100, and finish my 2nd 100 right, nope, still not done, and I've almost finished the first lap of my 3rd 100 as he is almost done with his 50 kick.... 4:30 to kick 50 yards and he was out of breath afterwards. I thought I imagined this but it happened a second time a few minutes later. Wow. I thought my kick was bad.

2) This Might Be A Record Stroke Count. I wish I could have had a minute to help this guy, because he took, by my count, 39 strokes to cross the 25-yard pool. Bilateral breathing, though! X-)

3) "I was just trying to get across!" I was in the middle of a 100, looked up at the + and there is somebody there -- must be how the guy steering the titanic felt -- and I screech to a halt and stick my head up. "Excuse me?!?" I say, and the woman replies, "Oh, I was just trying to get across before you got here!" OK, but it's only one lane to cross, and I'm pretty sure you didn't even bother to look before crossing it. People, please :)

-Eric

https://binged.it/2l1nG8d
JP Sears on Overly Naked Men in the Locker Room

Not that I have any experience, but it seems to come up regularly in this forum.....

I had a moderately strange denizen encounter yesterday morning. Also, where does this thread fit in the all-time rankings? Seems like it's been forgotten...

Anyway, guy next to me, wearing an M-dot swim cap, is bashing away at a long, continuous freestyle set. Chugging along at about 60 seconds per 50 yards. Every time he got to the end of the pool, during his open turn, he'd grip the gutter with both hands, baptize himself by going under the water, and exhale loudly underwater for about a second, then pop up, take another breath, and push off on his lap. For the life of me I couldn't figure out what he was trying to do.

-Eric

This thread is definitely worthy of HOF status where it is almost 12 years old and people still think to bubble it back to the top when they see something interesting at the pool. May not have the post count/vitriol of the current Ashley Horner thread, but the sheer longevity of it alone is great. Always brings a smile to my face when I see it pop back up on the main page, and I'm sure that I've been someone else's strange denizen of the pool at some point. ; )

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

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Agreed

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"If it costs you 30 minutes at Maryland so what" -dwreal

 

3) "I was just trying to get across!" I was in the middle of a 100, looked up at the + and there is somebody there -- must be how the guy steering the titanic felt -- and I screech to a halt and stick my head up. "Excuse me?!?" I say, and the woman replies, "Oh, I was just trying to get across before you got here!" OK, but it's only one lane to cross, and I'm pretty sure you didn't even bother to look before crossing it. People, please :)

-Eric[/quote]
This baffles me too. 6 Lane pool and people cross 5 lanes instead of walking around the pool to lane 6.

Something cannot be unseen

After my shower I walk to my locker old dude near me has his tighty whiteys in hand with a huge racing strip. Who the F has Brown racing strips in underwear at 6:15 AM

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All I Wanted Was A Pepsi, Just One Pepsi

Team Zoot, Team Zoot Mid-Atlantic

Who? Old people still wearing yesterday's underwear.

Had a new one the other day

Older lady bobbing up and down in a lane reading a paperback book in the pool. Then asked the kids taking swim lessons not to splash so much as it was getting her book wet. WTF!?!?!!?!?

Not all that unusual! This is a sub type of the very common type of denizen - the "old lady who hates to get her hair wet in the pool". I am sure many Slowtwitchers have encountered this denizen.

Last week saw a lady swimming in the speedlane with a pullbuoy which is not strange as such, but breaststroke???????

So, it's still summer break in these areas. Therefore, the Y has day camp for kids and the pool is a popular item. There are a lot of kids and they are separated into groups. Older guy gets done swimming and showering as a group of 8 yo is lining up in the locker room, right in front of the hand dryers. Older guy stands there, neked with a towel in his hand, and waits for a spot to open up. He needs to hot air dry his pits, junk, etc. He stood there, silently and patiently, for a good 2 minutes in front of the line before he got his chance.

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Take a short break from ST and read my blog:
http://tri-banter.blogspot.com/

I've been reading this thread from page 1 and have been dying to post about the strange denizens of my local pool here in Brazil.
In general, my fellow denizens seem really tame in comparison to the Y's experiences told here:

- Obviously we have our deep end guys. Funny thing is, our pool doesn't really have a deep end, so they stay basically crouched somewhere on the bottom of it, very peacefully. They are not creepy and I've never heard anyone complaining about them. When I'm doing laps and spot one of them, this never fails to play in my head. I've been dying to give them the diver OK sign, just to see if they'll give one back.

- There are lane walkers, but they stay in one lane and are overall very respectful. They seem to make a conscious effort not to make the water choppy.

- Two days a week, I swim in the afternoons, in a lane surrounded by children learning to swim. Never had a problem with it. It's actually nice to see them progressively improve their stroke.

- We don't have those naked seniors shaving/drying/displaying their balls proudly in the locker room. Thankfully we don't have hand dryers, because I'm very positive that it would encourage the boldest seniors to dry their parts under it.

- But I now have a cannonball man! Last time I went to the pool, I was resting between 100m repeats and I heard this guy asking the swim coach "can I get in now?". "Sure", the coach said, and the very bulky denizen proceeded to adjust his googles, pinch his nose and BOOM! The guy in the lane next to mine and I looked at each other with this expression on our faces:


But in the end it was fine, it was heartwarming to see such an old chap so joyfully frolicking in the water.

That is exactly why our Y and I would imagine most of the new ones has separate locker rooms for kids under 18. I am still scared from that type of situation at that age.

Ok exactly was an exaggeration but I would wager it's part of the reason.

---

"I think I've cracked the code. double letters are cheaters except for perfect squares (a, d, i, p and y). So Leddy isn't a cheater... "

Fixed it for you. Anything between [_quote SomeRando_] and [_/quote_] in your reply (with the underscores removed) will appear as a quote. Just make sure the text you type is outside of that and voila.

Also, welcome to Slowtwitch.

Also, ewh. :)

-Eric

This is one thread that must NEVER die. So entertaining, and yes, disturbing.

...someone who had them the night before;)

We have that lady at our pool. She does a modified standing breast stroke to keep her hair dry. She takes up half a lane while lap swimmer sometimes have to wait. But she idols not beat the guy at the pool who swims for almost two hours at a time flailing so badly the entire time that it is impossible to share a lane with him.

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I may not be fast, but once I get going, it is hard to stop me...

My friend told me about this thread and it has provided hours of entertainment!
As a former collegiate swimmer, current swim coach and lifelong swim community member, I always thought it was a just me thing for the oddities I see at the pool. After reading this thread, seems to be wide spread & glad I'm not the only one who finds these things odd.

While there's been a lot of odd men's change room happenings, we have some strange women as well:

1) Naked Shaving Lady:
Outside our shower area, there's a scale, the suit dryer machine & a long bench with some hook above where some ladies leave their towels to dry off so they don't get wet next to the shower.
I was walking into that area & come upon a completely naked woman in her mid-40s, standing outside of her shower, with her foot up on the ledge, facing outwards & shaving her private area.
And I don't mean trimming her bikini line, but shaving it ALL bald.
It was such a startling and up-close view of her snatch, that I stopped in my tracks. She then walks back into her shower, comes back out, puts her foot back up & keeps shaving her privates in full display.

A few weeks later, there was a sign up about not shaving in the shower area, so it wasn't an isolated event.

2) Full Face Make-Up "Swimmer":
There was a woman in her 20s-30s who was applying a full face of make-up as I was getting changed into my suit to swim. I head out on deck, jump in the pool & didn't give it a second thought. I stop at an interval, look over to the next lane & see it's full make-up girl kicking with a board while texting on her phone, which was in some kind of water proof case. A short while later, she's at the wall the same time that I am & asks me if I have to do that flippy thing, since it splashed her a little. (She verbatim said "flippy thing")
Mind you, there were 5 lanes, we were the only 2 people in the pool & she chose the lane next to me. I just stared at her, kept going & did a longer free set to increase my flip-turn count.

3) Gotta Collect 'Em All Guy:
Last week, I'm swimming outside and a guy in his 60s comes over to me & asks if I'm done using my kick-board. I'd just finished my kick set, so I say sure, take it, especially since in the summer the kids use the boards for anything but swimming, so finding one is a challenge. I keep swimming and after a while, I see he's gotten in.
I notice that he has a kick-board completely under his belly and is sort of paddling on top, similar to what you'd see a surfer do. Odd, but maybe it was a drill. Nope, he proceeds to paddle like that for 30 minutes.
When he stops & gets out, that's when I see that he had 5 kick-boards under him the entire time.
I'm not sure why he needed 5, but I also want to know which children he wrestled all those boards away from.

Oh g-d LOL, I'm never going to see olympic weightlifting the same way again.