Swim Rant

they reaired the swims on Universal Sports at night. Check in from 8PM on I think.

cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/.../ Nothing you haven't read before . . .

I am not a fan of: 1) shallow wavy pools, 2) pools with no stripe on the bottom, 3) pools with no marks on the walls, 4) pools with no lane lines, 5) warm / hot pools, 6) swimmers who swim down the middle or on the wrong side in circle swim lanes, 7) far away small pace clocks where I can't see the hands, big font bright digital clocks are so much better. & 8) out door changing areas with one barely working shower guess I'm missing the swim center 3 or 4 more weeks to go Ande

The "kids" under 40 in my lane who want to lead till 1/2 way thru practice , then drop back !

Swim teams/pools that take end-of-season breaks before masters championships. It's demotivating to compete if you can't get adequate training for a couple of weeks right before. Summer-only training schedules that are geared towards kids who aren't in school (but aren't friendly for those of us adults blessed with fulltime employment). Year-round school swim pools that close a couple of weeks at the end of summer but DO NOT perform maintenance at that time since the budgeted money is already spent. They have to wait until after Sep 1 (new fiscal year) to do repairs, meaning another pool closure, at which time many seasonal alternate pools have been shut down. Recreational swimmers who wear cotton T-shirts and baggy long cotton shorts while they struggle to swim laps with horrible technique. Girl - you're not kidding anybody that you are very overweight, appropriate swimwear is available in your size, and your enjoyment and technique would improve a lot if you didn't have your attire billowing around you and weighing you down.

I have a few new rants: 1. The triathletes who show up at the pool after their bike ride, or their run, and use the lap pool as a public bath. They sometimes don't even change out of their lycra spandex. >.

Has anyone ever swum in France? I don't know about other European countries, but I found, while living in France, that most pools follow different rules. Most cities have a couple pools and at least one of them is pretty nice, relatively new and 50m. This is where I usually would swim. There would usually be two or three lanes with lane lines for lap swimming and the rest of the pool (if there was nothing else going on like a swim practice) would be a free-for-all. I had to swim there once or twice, and had to find available wall to turn around on between the few couples hanging onto the sides and making out. Really, you ask? Yes, really. They would get into their swim suits and get all chlorine-y just to float vertically, hang on to the wall and sit there making out! Anywho, my true gripe is with the lap lanes. They do not have any lanes marked Fast/Medium/Slow and apparently disagree with this concept. I actually got yelled at by some woman that I needed to slow down, after I passed her. I did nothing but pass her, so it's not like she wanted me to slow down because I hit her or was drafting for a long time and tapping her feet forever or something rational. So when I got out of the pool, I went and talked to the lifeguard and asked if there were (unmarked, but understood) Fast/Slow lanes. He said no, and they would never do that because it wouldn't work out anyway. Slow people would think they're better than they are and swim in the wrong lanes anyway! I really hated it, because the pools were so nice otherwise!

Noodlers who refuse to share a lane. More specifically, 400 pound noodlers with kickboards who refuse to share a lane. My lunchtime swims are done in a small SCY pool with only 3 lanes. Unfortunately, the genius (separate rant) who designed this pool put a set of steps in one end of one lane, rendering it useless for flip turns. That leaves 2 lanes for lap swimming. The usual standard at this pool of mostly newbies is not to share lanes. Usually it isn't a problem because (nice!) there's nobody else in the pool. Every so often it is, and in those cases you can usually quickly agree to share a lane left/right. Not today! Lane 1 is occupied by a guy swimming a mile or something. He won't stop. In Lane 2, the 400 pound noodler with kickboard insists -- insists -- that the entire lane is needed for kicking, at 4 minutes per 50, and it is impossible -- impossible -- to do these kicking laps in the lane with the steps. I thought briefly about pointing out that you can't do a flip turn while hanging onto a kickboard, and/or that at 4 minutes per 50, missing one wall by a couple of feet was not going to make a difference, but the noodler didn't seem like the kind of person to whom a successful appeal to reason could be made. Normally I'm pretty sanguine about getting squeezed out, beacuse I can do drills or something in the crippled lane. Today I just didn't feel like it & left. Bottom line -- it's ok, 400 pound noodler needed it worse than I do.

Has anyone ever swum in France? I don't know about other European countries, but I found, while living in France, that most pools follow different rules. Most cities have a couple pools and at least one of them is pretty nice, relatively new and 50m. This is where I usually would swim. There would usually be two or three lanes with lane lines for lap swimming and the rest of the pool (if there was nothing else going on like a swim practice) would be a free-for-all. I had to swim there once or twice, and had to find available wall to turn around on between the few couples hanging onto the sides and making out. Really, you ask? Yes, really. They would get into their swim suits and get all chlorine-y just to float vertically, hang on to the wall and sit there making out! Anywho, my true gripe is with the lap lanes. They do not have any lanes marked Fast/Medium/Slow and apparently disagree with this concept. I actually got yelled at by some woman that I needed to slow down, after I passed her. I did nothing but pass her, so it's not like she wanted me to slow down because I hit her or was drafting for a long time and tapping her feet forever or something rational. So when I got out of the pool, I went and talked to the lifeguard and asked if there were (unmarked, but understood) Fast/Slow lanes. He said no, and they would never do that because it wouldn't work out anyway. Slow people would think they're better than they are and swim in the wrong lanes anyway! I really hated it, because the pools were so nice otherwise! Too funny! I swam in a pool at Les Halles, which was 50 meter and had lap lanes designated by stroke (free, back, ***, etc.). So, hubby and I jumped into the freestyle lane to do some laps of free and ran into locals, swimming breaststroke slowly or backstroke in the front crawl only lane. Reminded me of the traffic as well - the rules are important, and apply to everyone else, not me.

I generally try not to get too stressed at the pool, as it's my time to just get away and have some fun. However, I was really teed off yesterday, when the lifeguards just sat there and watched as a mother and her two young children who could barely swim, proceeded to dog paddle down the center of the fast lane! To make matter worse, right behind them was an old guy walking up and down the lanes (they are not very deep). Eventually, after the kids almost crashed into a few swimmers, one of the lifeguards finally woke up from her nap and asked the family to move to the slow lane. She left the old man alone though, and he continued to walk up and down the lanes holding up traffic...