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
Originally posted by Matt S
Is your workout style suited to the conditions as you find them? I know that back when I worshipped low rest intervals, swim every lap on the edge of puking my guts out, ANY distranction in my lane was an irritant. If you are following a similar prescription, maybe you can reduce the friction (and improve your swimming) by doing some lower speed drill work when the aqua-crowd is at its densest.
I agree, and I have pretty much given up on trying to hold intervals. I have been tempted to try to resume interval training on those rare occasions where there are only two of us in a lane (so that we can swim sides instead of circles), but inevitably a third person joins us within a few minutes and destroys that opportunity. You're right: once I gave up on interval work, there was less tension, so now I just swim longer distances.
Emmett: Perhaps it would be good to have you running our pool after all. A tighter ship would certainly help mitigate some of the problems. A few points, though...
There is no prohibition against throwing things at this pool. The lifeguards regularly hurl equipment across the pool when straightening up (to land it in the vicinity of the cages where they're stored), and the kids in the open swim lanes on weekends frequently play by grabbing exercise equipment and throwing it back and forth. That's one way it ends up in the lap lanes. When I mentioned that no one had said anything about it, I was referring to the water aerobes; the lifeguards wouldn't care.
Responding to your alternatives, I HAVE pushed the items back in their lanes. They just put them back. Considering that I'm being shocked out of my mental training zone, I'm usually not ready for conversation, so talking to the instructor or the ladies about keeping their stuff off the lane right then would probably go much worse than tossing it. I don't think I would be polite.
You asked: "...why you would direct your dramatization at the aerobics people instead of the staff or management?" I have spoken with the staff and management. They do little or nothing about the problems. I thought I had made that clear. It's pretty much a lost cause, up to the individual swimmers to fend for themselves.
You suggested that the actions of one lap swimmer affects how people would see all of them. You also said in a previous message that lap swimmers, as a group, gave you more problems than anyone else. Here's something for you to consider: how much of that perception is your own bias?
There is a certain legitimacy afforded to members of an organized group that is denied to individuals operating outside group boundaries. What I have seen, at this pool and others, is that when lap swimmers have complaints, they are largely swept aside. If a swimmer on a team has a complaint, however, he will tell his coach, and the coach's complaint will be taken seriously. The same complaint will not be handled the same way coming from a coach or instructor and from an individual swimmer, because our voice is viewed as less legitimate. The attitude seems to be "Oh, he's just a lap swimmer. We can't keep them happy anyway."
In order for a lap swimmer's complaint to have the same weight as the coach, it has to be coordinated with other complaints with other swimmers. If the coach of a team of 30 complains, the staff thinks that he speaks for 30 people. If a lap swimmer complains, his complaint won't be taken seriously unless he can gather thirty other lap swimmers to corroborate his statement and go in a group to complain. That's nearly impossible.
Suppose that a number of lap swimmers go individually to complain. Since it isn't a coordinated effort, they'll probably have a variety of complaints. If the swim coach were to come to the staff with the same set of complaints, they would still be taken more seriously, while the group of individual complaints would be dismissed as the ramblings of malcontents who would never be happy. "Yeah, those guys will complain about anything. You can't make them happy. Why bother."
Many of us have seen our requests and complaints ignored so often on this basis that all that's left for us is to defend our rights, sometimes taking matters into our own hands. If you see a lap swimmer acting in what you consider an uncivil manner, it's quite possible that he or she has been ignored, or at least perceives the situation that way. You think it's antisocial behavior, when in reality it's frustration at the staff's failure to do their jobs.
Try ignoring complaints or suggestions from an organized group the same way individual complaints are handled and see what happens. I don't think that lap swimmers are any more uncivil than other people; some of us are just fed up with being treated as the pool's red-headed stepchildren.
Originally posted by Matt S
Is your workout style suited to the conditions as you find them? I know that back when I worshipped low rest intervals, swim every lap on the edge of puking my guts out, ANY distranction in my lane was an irritant. If you are following a similar prescription, maybe you can reduce the friction (and improve your swimming) by doing some lower speed drill work when the aqua-crowd is at its densest.
I agree, and I have pretty much given up on trying to hold intervals. I have been tempted to try to resume interval training on those rare occasions where there are only two of us in a lane (so that we can swim sides instead of circles), but inevitably a third person joins us within a few minutes and destroys that opportunity. You're right: once I gave up on interval work, there was less tension, so now I just swim longer distances.
Emmett: Perhaps it would be good to have you running our pool after all. A tighter ship would certainly help mitigate some of the problems. A few points, though...
There is no prohibition against throwing things at this pool. The lifeguards regularly hurl equipment across the pool when straightening up (to land it in the vicinity of the cages where they're stored), and the kids in the open swim lanes on weekends frequently play by grabbing exercise equipment and throwing it back and forth. That's one way it ends up in the lap lanes. When I mentioned that no one had said anything about it, I was referring to the water aerobes; the lifeguards wouldn't care.
Responding to your alternatives, I HAVE pushed the items back in their lanes. They just put them back. Considering that I'm being shocked out of my mental training zone, I'm usually not ready for conversation, so talking to the instructor or the ladies about keeping their stuff off the lane right then would probably go much worse than tossing it. I don't think I would be polite.
You asked: "...why you would direct your dramatization at the aerobics people instead of the staff or management?" I have spoken with the staff and management. They do little or nothing about the problems. I thought I had made that clear. It's pretty much a lost cause, up to the individual swimmers to fend for themselves.
You suggested that the actions of one lap swimmer affects how people would see all of them. You also said in a previous message that lap swimmers, as a group, gave you more problems than anyone else. Here's something for you to consider: how much of that perception is your own bias?
There is a certain legitimacy afforded to members of an organized group that is denied to individuals operating outside group boundaries. What I have seen, at this pool and others, is that when lap swimmers have complaints, they are largely swept aside. If a swimmer on a team has a complaint, however, he will tell his coach, and the coach's complaint will be taken seriously. The same complaint will not be handled the same way coming from a coach or instructor and from an individual swimmer, because our voice is viewed as less legitimate. The attitude seems to be "Oh, he's just a lap swimmer. We can't keep them happy anyway."
In order for a lap swimmer's complaint to have the same weight as the coach, it has to be coordinated with other complaints with other swimmers. If the coach of a team of 30 complains, the staff thinks that he speaks for 30 people. If a lap swimmer complains, his complaint won't be taken seriously unless he can gather thirty other lap swimmers to corroborate his statement and go in a group to complain. That's nearly impossible.
Suppose that a number of lap swimmers go individually to complain. Since it isn't a coordinated effort, they'll probably have a variety of complaints. If the swim coach were to come to the staff with the same set of complaints, they would still be taken more seriously, while the group of individual complaints would be dismissed as the ramblings of malcontents who would never be happy. "Yeah, those guys will complain about anything. You can't make them happy. Why bother."
Many of us have seen our requests and complaints ignored so often on this basis that all that's left for us is to defend our rights, sometimes taking matters into our own hands. If you see a lap swimmer acting in what you consider an uncivil manner, it's quite possible that he or she has been ignored, or at least perceives the situation that way. You think it's antisocial behavior, when in reality it's frustration at the staff's failure to do their jobs.
Try ignoring complaints or suggestions from an organized group the same way individual complaints are handled and see what happens. I don't think that lap swimmers are any more uncivil than other people; some of us are just fed up with being treated as the pool's red-headed stepchildren.
