Swim Rant

Some of you will know that I have a slipped disc (actual extrusion) which is (so very) slowly shrinking. This Saturday 27th, there were quite a few people in my (public) pool's lane swim so I decided to warm up very slowly and really take my time. About 30' into my swim, I started feeling really good, flowing easily and doing what felt like a fantastic DPS. You know the feeling, right? Those (rare) days when you feel you're slipping through the water, fast with practically very little effort, God's in His Heaven and All's right with the World?. So I started pulling a little bit more, catching more (better?) water and really EVF'ing and enjoying it like the dickens. Most of you know what happens next. Right? It's a given......... A group of try-athletes (no typo there) gets in the pool and take up all the space. (For our lane swims, the six-lane pool is roped into four 1.5 widths-wide lanes. One would think, wouldn't one, that there'd be enough space for safe passing? One (of us swimmers) would also think that if one (the other one) took more than 20m in a 25m pool to overtake another slower swimmer, then one (the other one) should not be trying to overtake at all, specially if one (the overtaking one) is using a straight arm recovery that is parallel to the water (OK, not parallel but 3 degrees maybe) and fish-tailing and swerving like Mel Gibson (or Heather Locklear) on a happy night. So, I'm swimming at about 80% power, nice and long and I see a swimmer coming at me right smack dab down the middle of the wide-ish lane and I'm practically scraping the wall to my right when out of the blue that idiot (the other one) swerves right into my path thinking that he could overtake in less than 2 meters. I had to suddenly convert into an eel (or a Sidewinder) to twist out of the way. Three hours later (thankfully back home) my back is frozen. I can't unbend beyond 90 degrees and I'm still in bed (Monday) on painkillers and smelling to High Heavens of Rub-a-dub-dub A535 (Cold and Hot) :notworking:

Some of you will know that I have a slipped disc (actual extrusion) which is (so very) slowly shrinking. This Saturday 27th, there were quite a few people in my (public) pool's lane swim so I decided to warm up very slowly and really take my time. About 30' into my swim, I started feeling really good, flowing easily and doing what felt like a fantastic DPS. You know the feeling, right? Those (rare) days when you feel you're slipping through the water, fast with practically very little effort, God's in His Heaven and All's right with the World?. So I started pulling a little bit more, catching more (better?) water and really EVF'ing and enjoying it like the dickens. Most of you know what happens next. Right? It's a given......... A group of try-athletes (no typo there) gets in the pool and take up all the space. (For our lane swims, the six-lane pool is roped into four 1.5 widths-wide lanes. One would think, wouldn't one, that there'd be enough space for safe passing? One (of us swimmers) would also think that if one (the other one) took more than 20m in a 25m pool to overtake another slower swimmer, then one (the other one) should not be trying to overtake at all, specially if one (the overtaking one) is using a straight arm recovery that is parallel to the water (OK, not parallel but 3 degrees maybe) and fish-tailing and swerving like Mel Gibson (or Heather Locklear) on a happy night. So, I'm swimming at about 80% power, nice and long and I see a swimmer coming at me right smack dab down the middle of the wide-ish lane and I'm practically scraping the wall to my right when out of the blue that idiot (the other one) swerves right into my path thinking that he could overtake in less than 2 meters. I had to suddenly convert into an eel (or a Sidewinder) to twist out of the way. Three hours later (thankfully back home) my back is frozen. I can't unbend beyond 90 degrees and I'm still in bed (Monday) on painkillers and smelling to High Heavens of Rub-a-dub-dub A535 (Cold and Hot) :notworking: