What can make a potentially great pool and swim meet (78-80 degree deep water, wide lanes, great gutter system, good starting blocks, great lighting, large scoreboard, excellent officials, etc.) into a mediocre one? The lane lines.
We recently swam our championships in a new state-of-the-art pool. The only problem was the slack lane lines. The water was very choppy and continued that way throughout the whole race. They served no more purpose than the old “floaties” we used 45 years ago. They were so loose they visibly rose and fell with the waves and had so many horizontal waves they looked like serpents at the surface. The lane lines did not cut the waves but rather rode them. When there was a race with an open lane, the waves pushed the lane lines well into the free lane. Predictably overall times were not as fast as they could have been.
It is not necessary to have the lane lines are tight as a piano wire in order for them to be effective, but tightening them up for a meet is an area that is most often neglected. We work too hard at our craft not to be given every opportunity to swim as fast as the pool allows.
Parents
Former Member
Remember the 1970's when their was no such thing as lap swimming and if you did not workout on an age group or school team you could not swim in lane line. I remember swimming on a rec period where you had to put up with the kids and there were no lane lines back then. Health club pools still have few line lanes and the priority is to people in water aerobics there. But I think that some people who barely can swim benefit more from the aerobic classes. In fact some of those that go to the lap swimming should instead be involved with the aerobic classes because they can barely do 8 or 10 laps and usually have to stop 3 minutes after doing one lap. And different pools have different priorities, in my city the eastside of the town gets a lot more lap swimmers or people interested in aerobics since they are more middle class:however, the westside of town im many places, the rec pools are geared more toward kids since the area is less middle class.
Remember the 1970's when their was no such thing as lap swimming and if you did not workout on an age group or school team you could not swim in lane line. I remember swimming on a rec period where you had to put up with the kids and there were no lane lines back then. Health club pools still have few line lanes and the priority is to people in water aerobics there. But I think that some people who barely can swim benefit more from the aerobic classes. In fact some of those that go to the lap swimming should instead be involved with the aerobic classes because they can barely do 8 or 10 laps and usually have to stop 3 minutes after doing one lap. And different pools have different priorities, in my city the eastside of the town gets a lot more lap swimmers or people interested in aerobics since they are more middle class:however, the westside of town im many places, the rec pools are geared more toward kids since the area is less middle class.
