What makes you (or makes you want) to stop your swim workout, aside from being tired or feeling hurt?
- Sharing Lanes: Sometimes when I go to share a lane with someone, I'll get in, they'll do another lap, and get out. I feel guilty. I have on a couple occasions gotten out when people want to split lanes with me, especially if they're annoying and touch me/swim into me.
- Team Practices: I don't know why, but if I'm not part of the team practice that's in the pool, I don't want to be there. Maybe I just feel lazy next to them.
- Thinking about food: Food (particularly donuts for some reason) makes me feel sick while swimming. I've thrown up in my mouth on several occasions due to thinking about food while swimming. I love food, I love thinking about food, but not while swimming.
- Little kid swim lessons: The last time i swam next to this I got smacked in the face with an oar to an inflatable boat.
- The creepy middle aged guy that hangs out at the end of my lane to stretch when there are 7 open lanes. Wearing briefs, giant goggles, and covered in hair. Doing odd exercises like thrusting the ground or stretching hs hip flexors widely on the diving blocks. :bolt:
- Broken pace clocks
Former Member
poor air circulation
I'll second this comment. Lack of air circulation along with warm and humid air just takes the wind out of my sails.
For me, just being alone. My brain goes through the process of "well no one else is training, so you don't need to because they're not doing anything that makes them faster" However, once every billion years when I'm alone I train hard to get ahead XD
I am working on not letting anything kill my swim (except, of course, legitimate pain or illness). It's too easy to let myself get worked up over something and lose my focus. I generally regret it later.
I do great at an organized practice but when I swim solo I end up taking 90 minutes or so to do 3,200 scy. I keep talking to my various pool buddies who come and go during my work-out so I end up taking more time than I should between sets. Oh well, I rather have friends and social time I guess.
I stopped the day a guy had a seizure on the side of the pool, fell in, and had to be rescued by the lifeguard. Other people kept swimming and I took it upon myself to stop everyone in the other lanes so that the lifeguard could focus and we would be available to get additional help if needed. The ambulance came, the man was taken to the hospital, and while some folks started swimming again, I just couldn't get there. Somehow, it felt disrespectful.
We did find out later that he was fine, thankfully.
I am working on not letting anything kill my swim (except, of course, legitimate pain or illness). It's too easy to let myself get worked up over something and lose my focus. I generally regret it later.
I'm working on the same thing mainly because I have a hard enough time trying to make 5-swims / week anyway! :)
That being said...
when the pool is so crowded that there are at least two people per lane, and they're all split between fast/slow, or slow/slow, and circle swimming becomes a challenge at best, I find it difficult to see the point in swimming because most of it ends up as garbage yards anyway.
Though if someone was blowing snott all over the end of the pool, or someone with open sores all over their body was in my lane, I may just have to excuse myself! :bolt:
I stopped the day a guy had a seizure on the side of the pool, fell in, and had to be rescued by the lifeguard. . . The ambulance came, the man was taken to the hospital, and while some folks started swimming again, I just couldn't get there. Somehow, it felt disrespectful.
Glad to hear it! That would mess with my swim too.
My brain is usually what interferes with a good swim. Sometimes I am so emotional about something totally unrelated to swimming that I just cannot let it go & get in a good swim. This is one of the good things about swimming at the crack of dawn - very little has occurred at that time of day for me to think about other than swimming!! Swimming at lunchtime or in the evening however, is another story all together. When I have those kind of days, albeit very infrequently, I usually get in an 800 or so and then just call it a day.
I used to do that swimming solo too, if no one else came to push me, I was not capable of pushing myself. Now that I don't really have much choice, I have learned how to push myself, even without the benefit of a clock, if necessary. I wish I had developed this ability years ago, because it is very liberating! Swimming should not be like tennis, where one is dependent upon a partner to play - it generally is an individual sport, but I will agree - I love having someone to chase & race! I am usually much happier with workouts that include friends.
There are not too many things that can zap my desire to swim. I usually try to make the best of my time in and swim around folks who are going different speeds, and I am used to the warmer water that I cherish times that I can get in colder pools.
That being said, here are two things recently that have distracted me:
1. Our pool is going to be closed this summer to rebuild the walls that enclose the pool. Well, the town was in and had two guys on ladders removing the panels near the ceiling - it was just gross lokking on the other side of those pretty whitewashed walls, and I did not want to breathe any of that stuff in. Good thing it will be fixed!
2. I get annoyed when something happens when splitting the lane and then ... Some slower swimmers will move into the lane from the medium lane, and then more follow, and soon there are six people circling in the fast lane and two splitting the medium lane. :bump:
:2cents:
