After a few years of really poorly self-taught swimming, I completed the Guppy Challenge last summer and did quite well. What do you know? I really like swimming. I moved from Seattle proper to the Eastside last fall and finally got around to switching gyms from LA Fitness Ballard to the 24 Hour Fitness near Issaquah. Reasoning behind switch was distance, price, spin class schedule, and pool hours. Honestly, the biggest reason I have a gym membership is for pool access .
I had some allergy issues at LA Fitness, but* every single time* I swim at 24 Hr, I come away sneezing with a runny nose. It feels like I’m coming down with a flu, and no amount of benadryl can stop the flow. I assume that I’m allergic to chloramines which are caused when chlorine chemically reacts with sweat or urine (fun - that suggests adults are peeing in the pool at the gym since only 18+ are allowed). I’ve tried taking benadryl before swimming. It isn’t helping. Up next on my list is to try a nose clip and a neti pot. Worst case scenario - I can’t swim or I have to find a “cleaner” pool to swim in.
So are there clean Seattle area pools? Which ones are the cleanest? Anything close to DT Seattle or somewhere on the Eastside? Help!
I don’t know how far it is from you, but I once stayed at the Hotel Bellevue and it had the nicest indoor pool I’ve ever seen. The hotel has a 100,000 sq. ft. + gym that I believe is a private club (the Bellevue Club?) to which you can buy a membership. But my guess is it’s not cheap.
Best pool on that side of town is likely to be Bellevue Aquatic Center. 25y 6 lanes. It isn’t crowded. I mean at all. Often you can get a lane to yourself. And is kept clean. Pay no attention to the schedule though. It’s pretty much a free for all, except when masters or a school swim team or some other group (aquarobics) have the entire pool to themselves. Pool is run by the city so no membership. Water temp are mid to high 70s. It’s perfect.
Mercer Island and Juanita HS are old rundown pools. Water quality may be adequate (I don’t know) but the facilities are run down.
There’s a brand new pool at Columbia Athletic Club in Kirkland. Open only to gym members. Their older small pool was a cesspool of child bodily fluids though. Not sure if they keep the new pool only for lap swimming or allow dirty diapers into that one too.
There’s Gold’s Gym in Redmond with a 25y pool, where most eastside triathletes seem to train. I’ve not been there. There’s also Redmond city pool and there’s a pool in Issaquah. Also not been.
Pro Sports club on 148th by Microsoft has three pools of varying water temperature. Expensive membership.
Bellevue Club, as posted already, has a 50m pool only for members. It’s a country club or golf club or something. Thousands of dollars to join.
Best pool in the greater Seattle area, and my favorite, with a really great water quality, is King County Aquatic Center. Way down in Federal Way 30 miles south. No dirty diapers. It’s a 50m 8 lane Olympic pool with a dive tank and seating for thousands. The real deal. And they let us swim in it. But the drive. Getting there at 5:30 AM takes 30 minutes. Returning at 7:30 AM in rush hour traffic takes over an hour. :-/
You might try a few more things on the allergy front. First a nose clip; Missy Franklin can pull it off while setting world records at the Olympics. Then I would grab a neti pot and rinse the sinuses as soon as possible after each swim. At first you may have to combine this with pretreatment with Afrin because if you get too swollen the saline rinse can’t get through your nose. After a few times with the Afrin stop using it, chronic use makes more nasal mucosal swelling. I would also add a nasal steroid spray. Nasacort is now available OTC, or any of the other sprays like Flonase, Beconase etc would work as well. Finally I would probably keep taking an antihistamine but would try one of the nonsedating class such as Claritin, Allegra, Zyrtec, etc.
So to review: prevent allergens from getting into the nose, clean out anything that gets in anyway, reduce your body’s reaction with meds. Hope that can help you keep swimming.
I assume that I’m allergic to chloramines which are caused when chlorine chemically reacts with sweat or urine (fun - that suggests adults are peeing in the pool at the gym since only 18+ are allowed).
Every single pool you go to will have urine in it. There have been threads where over 50% of STers admit that they pee in the pool. I think that there was even a poll with this question although I don’t recall the result but yes, adults pee in pools. All the time. No, they won’t stop.
I wouldn’t describe it as super-nice, but Seattle Executive Fitness downtown at 5th & Columbia has a 25 yard pool and super cheap membership fees. It’s an older gym, so it’s not the most consistent water temp/clarity, but I’ve always found it swimmable. (Though there are occasional days that they crank the heat up and the water gets murky, but that tends to happen on the weekends when they have kids swimming lessons, so it’s bad for so many reasons.) They also have a morning masters program on Monday and Wednesday mornings.
There’s also the downtown Y right near it, but I can smell the chlorine from the street, so I’m assuming it will be the same issue as your current gym.
If the 24 Hour Fitness near Issaquah is convenient for you, you might try out 2 clubs just on the other side of I-90: Golds on Gilman Blvd, and the Sammamish Club at the far west end of Issaquah, just past the Burger King. I’ve been swimming at Golds for 2+ years with none of the ill effects you describe, and my wife swam at the Sammamish club pool for a few years as well, before we switched to Golds. The water at the Sammamish club pool strikes me as a bit warm, making hard swimming uncomfortable.
The Renton Lindbergh high school is not bad if your near the SE area of the metro. $4.25 per session, generally your own lane. Its an old pool/ facilities but I’ve found it to be pretty clean.
I wouldn’t describe it as super-nice, but Seattle Executive Fitness downtown at 5th & Columbia has a 25 yard pool and super cheap membership fees. It’s an older gym, so it’s not the most consistent water temp/clarity, but I’ve always found it swimmable. (Though there are occasional days that they crank the heat up and the water gets murky, but that tends to happen on the weekends when they have kids swimming lessons, so it’s bad for so many reasons.) They also have a morning masters program on Monday and Wednesday mornings.
There’s also the downtown Y right near it, but I can smell the chlorine from the street, so I’m assuming it will be the same issue as your current gym.
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Just joined at SEF and did it 100% for low cost and convenience. The pool, showers and locker rooms are crap and actually quite gross. They closed the pool without notice twice in the last two weeks for chemical treatment and when asked if there were cleanliness concerns they said they didn’t know. Also, I’ve been a member for about 2 months and 3 different occasions I have come in and the pool has been closed without notice. I asked where the notice was posted in the days prior and they said they couldnt put anything up because their printer ran out of ink. You have to “like” this crappy gym on facebook in order to receive updates. They wont setup a “swimmers” email distribution list but yet they will email you and pester you about bringing in new members and hiring one of their peice of $hi! personal trainers…DON’T GO TO SEATTLE EXECUTIVE FITNESS! Pool is dirty and often closed for chemical treatment and the staff is a bunch of meathead noobs with no business sense.
The pool I swim in is really clean and always 78 degrees through the winter… Only thing that sucks is there is a 15 year waiting list and an insane initiation fee to join the club that it is part of…
Probably don’t have a lot of $$$ for an expensive gym membership. I will have to look into Gold’s - I’ve been hearing good things.
I have yet to check out the city pool in Issaquah, but I haven’t heard anything wonderful. Yelp reviews, even taken with a grain or ten of salt, don’t paint a pretty picture.
Thank you for the detailed advice on how to do this! I will definitely try it out, and thanks for the heads up on Afrin. I am very hopeful that this will work. Side note- I’ll be seeing an allergist & asthma specialist for the first time next week, so maybe I can gather some extra advice from her.
So what you’re telling me is that if I get on the list now, there’s a possibility that in 15 years, I will be accepted and hopefully be making enough $$$$$ by then to cover the initiation fee?
I had forgotten about the Issaquah city pool, as I haven’t been there in a while. It’s heavily used as I recall, both by town residents and a variety of local swim teams. At about $5 per swim (a common rate in the area, as that’s about what the Bellevue and Mercer Island community pools also charge) it’s a bit expensive relative to a place like Golds. $5 / swim x 3 swims per week x 4 weeks a month gets you to $60 / month for just a pool. A membership to Golds or other gyms in the area is no more than that and you get more. The times I have found it useful to go there are when I needed to do pool running / aqua-jogging because I couldn’t run or cycle due to injury - the Issaquah and Mercer Island city pools are deep enough to do that but the pool at Golds in Issaquah and Redmond, and the Bellevue city pool are only about 4 feet deep.
If I were to go with one of the city pools, I’d just buy the annual pass. It’s something like $300 which is pretty budget friendly, but again, I hear that the Issaquah one is very busy.
Probably don’t have a lot of $$$ for an expensive gym membership. I will have to look into Gold’s - I’ve been hearing good things.
I have yet to check out the city pool in Issaquah, but I haven’t heard anything wonderful. Yelp reviews, even taken with a grain or ten of salt, don’t paint a pretty picture.
I swim at the Issaquah city pool, since 2004. It’s pretty old, but fairly clean. Pool is cleaner in winter than summer due to the volume of swim classes they do in the summer. The locker rooms, again, are old but but fairly clean.
Good news is a bond passed to update the pool and facilities. Bad news is that means it’ll close down for awhile (I heard in the fall of 2014).
When I lived in West Seattle, I swam at a city pool just off of 35th Street during the winter and Coleman pool (outdoor, salt water) during the summer.
So what you’re telling me is that if I get on the list now, there’s a possibility that in 15 years, I will be accepted and hopefully be making enough $$$$$ by then to cover the initiation fee?
It wouldn’t be worth the time. I was lucky enough to not have to go through the process (family has been members for ever). It would literally be cheaper to build your own pool then join.
Pro Club is super nice thought. Also look at the Redmond Swimming Pool (link below). I know a few people who swim there and like it.