I was in the pool at my local 24hr, last night, and just started my swim workout. During my rest, a rather large man asks to split the lane with me… Sure why not? He is about half way down and I start swimming. About 4 strokes away from him, the water starts to taste funny AND I smell his body odor… can’t really describe it and I don’t know how I can smell while swimming, but you get the point… I figure, oh well, it’ll disappear sooner or later… Then I catch up to him and WTF!!! This guy has some sort of pink skin rash or eczema on his upper thigh… this almost made me puke in the pool. That was the shortest swim workout I’ve ever had.
Please tell me I’ll be ok and that the chlorine killed his bacteria so I don’t catch it. I’m saying something to him next time I see him. YUCK!!
As a psoriasis sufferer, I can tell you that is not contagious - and it can leave marks like the one you described. My back and shoulders used to be pretty ugly. Fortunately, new medication has got it under control.
Most skin type diseases wouldn’t explain the body odor, that is something altogether different. Anyohw, I can understand the shock, but you are in no danger, chlorine or not if it was psoriasis
i swim at what is probably the most disgusting pool in the area. sometimes i see floating bandaids, sometimes strands of hair get in my face plus the whole thing is heated to an nasty warm soup like temperature. The only reason i keep going is because it is by far the most flexible option in terms of lane time.
a week or so ago i was swimming and i couldn’t get my mind off of the hugely obese woman in the lane next to me. i couldn’t handel it. i felt like her sweat was the reason the pool was so warm.
The smell thing in the pool blows me away. At the pool I used to swim at, the lifeguards wore such intense perfume that whenever I was done at her end of the pool I could smell it in the water. Seems like the water made it stronger. Gross. I’ve dealt with the body odor thing, too.
I get the hair-in-the-face thing a lot, but I don’t really think there’s much that can be done about that. I swim at a really nice pool at Denver University now, so I figure it’s just something that’s always going to happen.
Was it a salty taste? Maybe the guy’s a triathlete and he automatically pees when he starts to swim…
Smell and taste are integrally related, which is why you hold your nose when you take nasty medicines. So it’s possible you were tasting whatever you were smelling. Most gyms have a policy (and usually a sign) about showering before getting into the pool. But there’s always some guy (usually the guy they had in mind when they made the sign) who figures it’s meant for somebody else.
The pool my high school team swam in was rank enough I have no idea how they passed health department inspection. For the most part, we ignored the nastiness, but we did get out of practicing in the water one day because someone noticed a used tampon on the bottom of the pool in the deep end.
