Just wondering how many swimmers most of you share a lane with during masters workouts. People around here are starting to get indignant when they have to share a lane with someone else during a masters workout. I don't understand it. I was wondering if this is a national phenomenon.
Our workouts are usually 2-6 people per lane, 6 lanes. The lanes are all arranged by speed so usually people are roughly similar in speed. Although start up a fly or IM set with 6 people in the lane and surrounded by 6 person lanes and it gets crazy, kind of like swimming open water. Our Saturday mornings are like that.
On a tangent I see lots of comments about arguing over or getting to go first as if everyone wants to lead. Is that the case for most people? I know certainly in my lane (the fastest lane usually) at our workouts it's always a big fight over who HAS to lead. Once the main set comes up the excuses start flowing, and everyone has one. "My shoulder is stiff", "I was out of the water last week", "I want to work on my stroke", "I'm feeling really tired today". We tend to fight over who gets to go last. All of us are standing under the flags, no one wanting to take the wall.
Anyone else that way or is that just an ex-age group/college mentality or something? I find if there aren't many in the lane I prefer to go last even if I have to give the person in front of me 15 or 20 seconds so that I can set my own pace and am not getting run over by someone who wants to take out a 400 as if it were a 50.
4-5 to a lane is the most I've personally swam with in short course yards. Depending on the speed, you're not going to get much more than that before people start getting lapped constantly.
On a tangent I see lots of comments about arguing over or getting to go first as if everyone wants to lead. Is that the case for most people? I know certainly in my lane (the fastest lane usually) at our workouts it's always a big fight over who HAS to lead. Once the main set comes up the excuses start flowing, and everyone has one. "My shoulder is stiff", "I was out of the water last week", "I want to work on my stroke", "I'm feeling really tired today". We tend to fight over who gets to go last. All of us are standing under the flags, no one wanting to take the wall.
LOL!!!
Are you observing our practices??? That happens all the time. My view is I will lead anything 50 or less unless it's breaststroke. I can sometimes be convinced to lead 100 Free descend sets and you need to put a gun to my head to get me to lead anything 200 or longer.
On a tangent I see lots of comments about arguing over or getting to go first as if everyone wants to lead. Is that the case for most people? I know certainly in my lane (the fastest lane usually) at our workouts it's always a big fight over who HAS to lead. Once the main set comes up the excuses start flowing, and everyone has one. "My shoulder is stiff", "I was out of the water last week", "I want to work on my stroke", "I'm feeling really tired today". We tend to fight over who gets to go last. All of us are standing under the flags, no one wanting to take the wall.
Don't want you to get the wrong impression--that's absolutely the case with my lane too. Everybody wants to go second. It's a test of wills to see who will lead, almost like a game of chicken. We all know we're starting the next set on the top, but no one knows who will push off first until someone "blinks first" and caves.
Masters here is usually about 1-2 per lane with 5 lanes during short course. Long course we go down to 2 lanes and 3-4 per lane. Age group team, last year we had up to 15 kids per lane in LC. And I was usually stuck against the wall with that many kids. It was hard! This year we have about 6 per lane LC. SC we have 1-2 during the week and 4-5 on Saturdays.
My masters team in Oregon we had 5-6 per lane both SC and LC.
In addition to having 11 people per lane some nights, we have also had nights with a water temperature of 88 degrees AND an air temperature of 96 degrees. Yuk!
Anna Lea
It could be worse... you could be having a running practice in that weather. We in Philly are having a spate of hot, muggy weather, and wouldn't you know, this is the summer I decide to focus on running. Some days, I step outside, feel pressed in by the heat/humidity... and ASAP take shelter at my Y on their treadmills--only one runner allowed per treadmill (I know, I know...y'all are thinking "what fun is that?"). :joker:
tjrpatt, I was swimming at the 'nova pool for the Sunday workouts for a while last year--had the slow lane (no. 10) and for the most part would never have more than one or two other swimmers (including an occasional faster swimmer doing a cool-down). One of the benefits of being slow, maybe.... ;)
Currently training for the Philly Distance Run, so haven't done so much swimming except some easy recovery efforts. In the fall, my Y will have a masters' group again, so I hope to pick up more yards... I doubt very much I'll have a lane to myself in those practices as our Y tends to like to multi-task the pool. No big deal.
Don't want you to get the wrong impression--that's absolutely the case with my lane too. Everybody wants to go second. It's a test of wills to see who will lead, almost like a game of chicken. We all know we're starting the next set on the top, but no one knows who will push off first until someone "blinks first" and caves.
Every group I've swam with has this issue. While visiting Tucson last week, I swam with the team there, and was elected to lead the lane, even though I didn't know or understand their system for intervals. I just went with the next lane, figuring if they didn't like it someone else could lead.
I don't mind leading, but what I do mind is when someone doesn't want to lead, yet catches me fairly quickly. It screws up my set to have to stop to let them pass.
We swim one to a lane or split the lane. I'm not sure folks around here would know how to circle swim. Getting your own lane does spoil you since there are no worries about doing full-stroke fly and you can come off the wall in the middle of the lane.
