i swim in the medium to slower lanes at a very competitive masters team workouts in san diego, and am usually asked to slide down to slower lanes when the equal ability swimmers (vs triathletes) show up.
the funny thing is most of these swimmers use a pull bouy or fins for the WHOLE workout. i think it's a ego thing in la-la land.
i would like to swim with people who can push me harder, instead of down in the last slowest lane. should i just chalk it up to normal swimmers protocal? or find another team? :confused:
Former Member
That's one way of dealing with the over-inflated egos who swim in a specific (public swims, not team or Masters) lane only because this lane is marked as the fast lane (even though the other lanes—to flatter egos, I guess— are medium fast and medium. There's no slow lane. The trick when overtaking them is cutting in in front of them (and even if you're really only doing arm pulls) flutter-kick furiously right under their nose (literally). When this is repeated a few times, most of them get the message and move down.
There's no science to it really. Slower boy was not hugging the lane line and was swimming almost in the middle of the lane. Add to that two big boys with fins coming the other direction. And there I am right in the middle passing as the part of the set was *fast* so I was not planning on slowing down. I avoided a collision by some stroke of luck. Anyway, great OW practice. The slower swimmer got out of the lane right after that.
What I have learned from this thread is that normal protocol is that the lanes are in absolute havoc, and some swimmers actually like it that way.
I don't like havoc, that's why I train alone. But learning to deal with havoc does have its uses. In open water & triathlon swim starts, it can get really violent. The first time I found myself in that situation, I realized that spending my younger years in crowded lanes had prepared me perfectly for it. I fended off fools without breaking stroke. Someone swam on top of my legs so I automatically switched to a 6 beat kick; problem solved. I did struggle to ignore the mental signal to yield that fires when someone pointedly taps on my feet. In open water, it just means that whoever is behind me sucks at drafting.
also you can push off the wall underneath the lane line and do your SDK's there. In a crowded situation, that can really come in handy.
Best advice ever particularly when you've got 5 to 6 flyers in a lane SCY doing repeats for time going 5 seconds apart. You will be screwed by flailing arms and turbulence if you don't use some major SDK off the walls.
