Quote in the local newspaper from the high school state champion in the 100 yard freestyle (conducted in a 25 yard pool):
"On the third lap of my 100, I breathed twice in a row and I shouldn't have done that."
Dan
Yeah, I understand the difference but I never heard anyone differentiate lap/length until I was a master's swimmer.
As a kid, lap=length.
To me it's just a swimmerism.
Like, "I need to work on my *** pullouts." :eek:
Or, "I didn't recognize you in clothes." :blush:
It doesn't help when you look up the definition, that different dictionaries give different meanings for lap.
Miriam-Webster defines this meaning of lap as:
"a : the act or an instance of traversing a course (as a racing track or swimming pool); also : the distance covered
b : one segment of a larger unit (as a journey)
c : one complete turn (as of a rope around a drum)"
So, if the pool is 25 Short COURSE yards, going for the complete 25 yards IS completing the course. If you started as an 8&U, that's the whole deal, so it makes sense to me that coaches of age groupers and swimmers who started as kids adopted this usage of terminology. As a 6 or 7 year old if you get to the other end of the pool and you have to go BACK, that's a big deal because you have to do the same thing you just did (complete the course).
To be lapped is a different definition entirely, with a whole other section, and doesn't change the definition of lap as a noun.
But :dedhorse::dedhorse::dedhorse:
Yeah, I understand the difference but I never heard anyone differentiate lap/length until I was a master's swimmer.
As a kid, lap=length.
To me it's just a swimmerism.
Like, "I need to work on my *** pullouts." :eek:
Or, "I didn't recognize you in clothes." :blush:
It doesn't help when you look up the definition, that different dictionaries give different meanings for lap.
Miriam-Webster defines this meaning of lap as:
"a : the act or an instance of traversing a course (as a racing track or swimming pool); also : the distance covered
b : one segment of a larger unit (as a journey)
c : one complete turn (as of a rope around a drum)"
So, if the pool is 25 Short COURSE yards, going for the complete 25 yards IS completing the course. If you started as an 8&U, that's the whole deal, so it makes sense to me that coaches of age groupers and swimmers who started as kids adopted this usage of terminology. As a 6 or 7 year old if you get to the other end of the pool and you have to go BACK, that's a big deal because you have to do the same thing you just did (complete the course).
To be lapped is a different definition entirely, with a whole other section, and doesn't change the definition of lap as a noun.
But :dedhorse::dedhorse::dedhorse:
