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
There are so many different groups using pools these days. Back in the 1970's many pools mainly ran only summer programs for kids to learn to swim and had free rec time. The only people that workout were age group AAU or summer league swimmers and of course there were few masters teams and almost no water exercise classes or lap swimming The rec pool I workout is great for the lap swimmers since there are no masters team or age group team and the water aeorbic classes usally workout at a different time and there is only a summer league team for the kids. Also, rec swimming in the summertime is on different hours than lap swimming. Lap swimmers are not all that bad at swimming some of them can swim better than some of the adults on master teams. I understand that maybe some of them get out of hand but not all of us can swim on masters teams because of our work schedules or the nearest team is 20 miles plus from where we live. I'm a lap swimmer and workout on my own and have done about 3 masters meets since I join masters mainly to do that and like the Swim Magazine.
There are so many different groups using pools these days. Back in the 1970's many pools mainly ran only summer programs for kids to learn to swim and had free rec time. The only people that workout were age group AAU or summer league swimmers and of course there were few masters teams and almost no water exercise classes or lap swimming The rec pool I workout is great for the lap swimmers since there are no masters team or age group team and the water aeorbic classes usally workout at a different time and there is only a summer league team for the kids. Also, rec swimming in the summertime is on different hours than lap swimming. Lap swimmers are not all that bad at swimming some of them can swim better than some of the adults on master teams. I understand that maybe some of them get out of hand but not all of us can swim on masters teams because of our work schedules or the nearest team is 20 miles plus from where we live. I'm a lap swimmer and workout on my own and have done about 3 masters meets since I join masters mainly to do that and like the Swim Magazine.
