Hey gang,
I'm being watchful of the weather (and a free-lance deadline)--so I'm hoping that I don't run into the same problem as I did about a week ago.
At that time, I had set out to do a pretty long workout (need the yards for my open water swim!). Unfortunately, the lifeguards chased us out of the pool b/c of hearing thunder. They told me that they'd wait a half hour, but that the clock would be reset if there was more thunder.
Won't even get started on why this should be the case, but more important for my purposes is to get a sense of what you do if your schedule is tight and the time you set up for swimming a specific workout is thrown out due to something like this (heck, you can substitute other events that close pools, if you want, as the t-storm is just one way such a thing can happen).
Do you wait until who knows how long and hope the pool will reopen? Do something dry-land that will at least use the swimming muscles? Bag it and decide it's not your day? (As it happened, it was last Friday and although I'm not superstitious, mostly, it seemed as if that day was full of things that went wrong. Won't go into all that.)
I want--no, NEED, to make sure I'm staying abreast of the training and I hate missing time for something like that--and probably just need to plan better to go early in the morning when there are fewer thunderstorms--but that said, stuff happens (even early in the morning), so I want to have a good back-up plan--or be all Zen about it and know that over the long haul, I'll be ready.
Thanks for any thoughts!
The '04 Long Course Masters Nationals were held in Savannah, GA in an indoor pool. One heat of the 1500 was about half done when thunder was heard. The pool was cleared and as it happened swimming stopped for the day or at least a few hours. Those people in the heat had to swim the entire race over again.
In there defense,there was a hurricane in the area,and it was an inflatable cover.That was an awful situation for the swimmers involved.Some swam 1/2 of the 1500 that evening and got to come back and swim it all again in the morning.
copper pipes and electrical wires tend to conduct just a tiny bit better than water does.
now, granted, at the voltage a lightening bolt is at, it is for the most part a mute point.
but we all know electricity is lazy. it takes the shortest path to ground. chances (not that we should risk it outside) are zero the pool gets hit before something else: fence, dive tower, umbrellas, lifeguard chair....
and yes ive been swimming in an outdoor pool when the chimney of the building next to the pool was hit by lightening. the bottom got super bright yellow for a blink. we all jumped out.
and yes i've swam in hail. it was small.
and yes ive also been in an outdoor pool when we saw a tornado just 2 miles away. not just a funnel cloud but actual on the ground tornado. yes, dorthy and i were in kansas at the time. hate that dog toto. :D
Our local pool (which is indoor) does not clear out for severe weather (which I am very thankful for).
We do, however, sometimes get delayed due to lifeguards not showing up on time. Folks usually just talk in the back hallway as we wait. If it's too long, I generally just take a shower and head home.
Will say that the one advantage my other sport (running) has is that typically they don't shut down treadmills in a thunderstorm, so if I'm outside running and a thunderstorm hits, I head for the gym and finish on the treadmill--not ideal, but at least something.
OTOH, swimming has a lot of benefits or I wouldn't have adopted it as one of my two go-to sports.
But whether or not it's sound policy, if it is indeed the policy at the indoor pool where you swim and they do hear thunder and close the pool, you're not going to get them to change their minds that day no matter how much you argue about it. So the original question still stands: what approach do you take to your workout?
I pretty much have to just bag it for the day in that situation since I usually pack my gym bag for either a swim or a dryland, not both and there's not much wiggle room in my schedule for me to wait it out. It's not ideal, though, and end up all grumbly when that happens.
Very enlightning .
We usually get thunderstorms twice a week during summer months. The one convenient OD pool I swim in plays by the book but uses it to cash in since lightning typically persists within 5 nautical miles for over 30 minutes. So they clear the pool, wait for the next bolt to occur 30 minutes later (which always happens), then close the pool for rest of the day, which is clear an sunny with no lightning around.
I'm guessing there are a few people who have swum when there was lighting but most likely a few more who have swam at that time!:D
I think most people swim with lighting:bolt:
Well, my happy news today is that I was able to do my workout--all 7200 yards--without weather interference, thank you God!
I think that sometimes I get kinda stressed about making sure I keep up with the workouts b/c it's a 5 miler, and I'm none too fast, but I know at least I can swim on and on for a while--today's workout called for 6000 yards, including a minimum 300 yds warm-down. My times were slower than they were supposed to be for the rest of the workout but somehow getting to that warm-down was such a relief that I kind of got on a roll and went for 3x500 easy, to get in the extra yards. At that point, oddly, my stroke felt better--I felt more relaxed, knowing that I'd done what was prescribed and wanting to swim just to swim for a bit, no times to aim for, just moving through the water in a nice hypnotic rhythmic way. It seems so much easier to up-end a swim workout and so that makes for some stress when a key workout is coming up--and when I finish it, the relief is so immense that I get new energy.
p.s. re the swim/swam/swum question--heck, why not just add "swimmed" to the mix! :) :worms:
