Holy moly, I'm getting confused....
Like all of us, I learned early on that a mile is defined as 5280'. Simple math coverts 5280' to 1760 yards. But now I've read that a mile in the pool is 1500 meters, or about 1640 yards. :worms:
I swim at a pool that is 25 yards long, so is a mile 66 lengths (or 1650 yards) of a pool, or is it 70 lengths?
I've also heard folks referring to a lap as what I have always thought of as a length...again I swim at a pool that is 25 yards in length....so isn't a "lap" in this case 50 yards (down and back)?
Please set me straight!
:groovy:
I've always considered 1800 yards my pool "mile," even though it's really over the 1760 yards that my grade school math taught me was a mile. I figured that way I had the full mile and then some, whereas if I swam 70 lengths (1750) it would be too short for my OCD self to accept; 71 lengths would have me finishing at the wrong end of the pool from where my water and pool toys (typically kickboard and pull buoy but of late paddles and fins), so that made me feel out of kilter. Plus I figured if I could swim x amount of time in 1800 yards, I'd feel all the more ready to swim a true mile in that time or better. (In theory only... in o.w., it tended to vary depending on a lot of stuff.) I didn't ever belong to a 50 mile (or 51 or whatever) mile club so that was never an issue.
Oh, and I'm both a runner and a swimmer, but I remember using the term "lap" before I got into running and defining it for myself as a length of the pool.
It gets so complicated that when people not into swimming (for swimmers, I always use "yards" to describe my distances) ask how far I swam, unless it was for at least 2 miles, I just say how many yards. Then someone asks, "How many laps is that?" Sigh!
I've always considered 1800 yards my pool "mile," even though it's really over the 1760 yards that my grade school math taught me was a mile. I figured that way I had the full mile and then some, whereas if I swam 70 lengths (1750) it would be too short for my OCD self to accept; 71 lengths would have me finishing at the wrong end of the pool from where my water and pool toys (typically kickboard and pull buoy but of late paddles and fins), so that made me feel out of kilter. Plus I figured if I could swim x amount of time in 1800 yards, I'd feel all the more ready to swim a true mile in that time or better. (In theory only... in o.w., it tended to vary depending on a lot of stuff.) I didn't ever belong to a 50 mile (or 51 or whatever) mile club so that was never an issue.
Oh, and I'm both a runner and a swimmer, but I remember using the term "lap" before I got into running and defining it for myself as a length of the pool.
It gets so complicated that when people not into swimming (for swimmers, I always use "yards" to describe my distances) ask how far I swam, unless it was for at least 2 miles, I just say how many yards. Then someone asks, "How many laps is that?" Sigh!
