It sounds odd but I don’t really look at my goggles much. Just out of the bag, on my face and back into the bag. The other day, I was sitting at the edge of the pool and smelled something funky. I looked all around and couldn’t identify anything and then, to my horror, realized it was coming from my goggles. Somehow I’d never noticed that over the years a gruesome, crusty black/green mung was building up on the inside in the plastic crevice around the lens. In fact, the actual viewing window of each eye is probably down to 85% of its original circumference as the edge got consumed by the goggle mung. It’s just happened so gradually that I never noticed.
The sad thing is that I love these goggles. I had them for two years then they were in a piece of luggage lost by the airlines in Hawaii. A year after returning from the islands, United called us up and said they had found my bag and my beloved goggles. That was two years ago now and I still haven’t forgotten the pain of trying pair after pair during that year that they were missing and having none of them fit quite right.
So I guess this is both a cautionary tale and a bit of a eulogy. Presumably the technology exists to clean my goggles but having actually smelled them rotting I don’t think I can go back to them and must now strike out anew.
Any advice on replacements? Is the Shark mask all it’s cracked up to be?
p.s. The ironic thing is that I keep my bike absolutely pristine, change my running shoes constantly and yet was putting these little petri dishes over my eyes day in and day out for months…
Dude, I’m dying of laughter. Your thread cracked me up! Try hosing those things down with simple green or bleach. Maybe they’d be ok to run through the dishwasher on the top rack… anyway, thanks for the laugh.
Hey - look at the bright side. It took you over two years for something to grow on those goggles. With my swim skills, by the time I exit the water at races, whole forests of bacteria could have grown, flourished and evolved into chimpanzees in my lens. Try swimming with a few a bunch of primates typing out the words to Shakespeare in your goggles. It slows you down quite a bit (that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it)
I’m exactly the same way, I’ll hang onto a pair of goggles until the UN inspection team comes around looking for WMD in my pool bag. (Of course they never find what they are looking for but that is an entirely different thread).
What is worse, I use those ridiculously cheap ($3) sweedish goggles and I still hang onto them too long. Just this past Mon. I realized that I had a brand new pair sitting in the closet unused while I was swimming in mung. The problem is I still didn’t throw out the old goggles.
I can honestly say that I feel your pain, but I wonder why you don’t just get an identical pair? Are they no longer manufactured? I am partial to the swedes but have recently branched out into the world of cushy gushy fat gasket goggles and I have been okay with my self esteem and sense of self worth as a swimmer. I suddenly realized that swedish goggles can be pretty damn uncomfortable, especially with a good punch to the face. I still use them in the pool, but open water, I like the Aquaspheres and the Speedo’s with the flexible silicon body. As a high school and age group swim coach, I have the benefit of trying all the wonderful goggles lost and left behind and subsequently appropriated by the coaching staff for testing to find the most comfortable pair. Lane 4 makes a pretty good pair. I even scored a pair of Spongebob Goggles, and they work great, might even use them at IMFL. As far as the little petri dishes, don’t think about it. I am sure that the water you (and all of us) swim in is one big vat of agar, and if that doesn’t kill you, gunk in the goggles won’t either (or so I’ve heard). Good Luck in your quest.
I have a drawer full of old swedes, most missing straps. Some are in perfect shape except for the straps, others should be tossed. I tried to find replacement straps but couldn’t.
