Swim Rant

Originally Posted by 3strokes forums.usms.org/.../viewpost.gif In the thread about outdoors pools closing and frustrations on the East Coast (my memory's not that good) and when I promised not to post my rant on the rant thread, it was suggested that I should. So, here goes. Lucky you! Ours (outdoors pool) closed on Monday (last day was Sunday Aug 26, last day of a lousy week, weather-wise, cloudy, very few sunny breaks, while I was at work, with the cloud coverage coming in right as I left the office.) Then the whole week of Aug 26 right up to the long weekend was gorgeous and no outdoors pool. To add insult to misery, my usual indoors pool is closed for three weeks of maintenance and the other one I use as an alternate was not too crowded last Friday but I felt like a ton of bricks. I stopped swimming after 20 minutes. Yesterday (Saturday), I went there again and I knew from the first two lengths that I would (should) have a great day of swimming; long easy strokes, moving seemingly without effort, one of those days when you feel you could do a PB. Then half the population of the City showed up (the lower IQ and SA (swimming ability) half). There were about 40 swimmers per lane (of six) in a 25m long pool. Life-guards' (collective) IQ even lower. No desire whatsoever to ask extremely slow swimmers to move down, even just one lane from the fast lane to the second fastest. No desire to ask dead slow swimmers to try and swim (swim? Ha Ha!) to the side of the lane to give others a chance to overtake them. Every time I waited for a sufficient gap, allowing a swimmer(?) to push off and trying to push off when he/she reached a point some 10 to 12 meters away so I wouldn't have to hit my hands on their feet (or worse, between their widely scissoring, and 62 degrees sinking, legs) at the other end, someone, standing by me would push off and cancel the gap. And if I swam my usual, thinking, "OK. I'll just overtake him/her within 5 to 7 meters of the push-off", I'd run into two (land) turtles racing (overtaking) each other coming the other way (at a speed (OK, not speed, but "rate") where they would need an 80m long pool to overtake one another), leaving enough space on my side of the lane for an anorexic eel. About 30 minutes into the swim, I decided that my blood pressure had risen enough and that I did NOT need to have to change my Forum name to 4Strokes. Don't worry, Forumites; I'm not going to repeat this post in the .....rant thread. Strike that last sentence from the Record.

Originally Posted by 3strokes forums.usms.org/.../viewpost.gif In the thread about outdoors pools closing and frustrations on the East Coast (my memory's not that good) and when I promised not to post my rant on the rant thread, it was suggested that I should. So, here goes. Lucky you! Ours (outdoors pool) closed on Monday (last day was Sunday Aug 26, last day of a lousy week, weather-wise, cloudy, very few sunny breaks, while I was at work, with the cloud coverage coming in right as I left the office.) Then the whole week of Aug 26 right up to the long weekend was gorgeous and no outdoors pool. To add insult to misery, my usual indoors pool is closed for three weeks of maintenance and the other one I use as an alternate was not too crowded last Friday but I felt like a ton of bricks. I stopped swimming after 20 minutes. Yesterday (Saturday), I went there again and I knew from the first two lengths that I would (should) have a great day of swimming; long easy strokes, moving seemingly without effort, one of those days when you feel you could do a PB. Then half the population of the City showed up (the lower IQ and SA (swimming ability) half). There were about 40 swimmers per lane (of six) in a 25m long pool. Life-guards' (collective) IQ even lower. No desire whatsoever to ask extremely slow swimmers to move down, even just one lane from the fast lane to the second fastest. No desire to ask dead slow swimmers to try and swim (swim? Ha Ha!) to the side of the lane to give others a chance to overtake them. Every time I waited for a sufficient gap, allowing a swimmer(?) to push off and trying to push off when he/she reached a point some 10 to 12 meters away so I wouldn't have to hit my hands on their feet (or worse, between their widely scissoring, and 62 degrees sinking, legs) at the other end, someone, standing by me would push off and cancel the gap. And if I swam my usual, thinking, "OK. I'll just overtake him/her within 5 to 7 meters of the push-off", I'd run into two (land) turtles racing (overtaking) each other coming the other way (at a speed (OK, not speed, but "rate") where they would need an 80m long pool to overtake one another), leaving enough space on my side of the lane for an anorexic eel. About 30 minutes into the swim, I decided that my blood pressure had risen enough and that I did NOT need to have to change my Forum name to 4Strokes. Don't worry, Forumites; I'm not going to repeat this post in the .....rant thread. Strike that last sentence from the Record.