New game! Here's how to play: get in the water and swim. When you see a person emerge from one of the locker rooms, make a mental bookmark of where you are in your workout/set/swim and keep going. Once the other person starts swimming, make another mental bookmark and then subtract the difference. The number of yards or meters you swam before the other person finally started is your score!
This morning I was at the 175 mark of my standard 800 IM stroke drill warmup when I noticed another guy on the pool deck. He started swimming right after I finished my 800, yielding a score of 625. Can you beat my high score??? You can play this game as many times as you want during your workout, as long as there are slackers milling around.
To win this game you need to swim as much as possible and not waste time. If you see more than one person on the pool deck, you need to pick the right slacker. They should do several of the following:
Carefully arrange their toy pile at the end of their lane
Talk to anyone and everyone
Put on their cap, goggles, MP3 player, heart rate monitor, nose clip, earplugs, facemask, snorkel, fins, pull buoy...
Drag over a chair for their mini-whiteboard that has the workout written out on it
Oh wait no it doesn't, so they write it out there on the pooldeck
Sit with their feet in the water, just staring at the pool (this is my secret weapon! the guy this morning increased my score by around 400 just from doing this!)
Slowly lower themselves into the water inch by inch
Complain that the water is cold/warm/wet
Brawl with the noodlers (ok I've never actually seen this happen, but it would be pretty awesome wouldn't it?)
You guys aren't working very hard if you have time to make all these observations while working out.
I kind of agree but I think many of the people playing this game are far better swimmers than I am. I'm pretty oblivious to what is going on beyond my adjacent lanes. Might be something to play during long kick sets. But in our pool, there aren't a lot of people hanging out on the deck for reasons other than to wait for a lane. The only really peculiar behaviour I've seen is the complete opposite of people taking their time to get in the pool. We have this one guy who beelines straight from the locker room to the pool, bellyflops into a lane and sprints for 50 yards... sometimes 100. Then, he gets out, heads straight back to the locker rooms, dresses and leaves. It can be quite a shock if you are swimming in the lane next to the one he enters. IF I saw him coming, I might score 5 yards. Is there a contest for least yards swum before your mark enters the pool?
You guys aren't working very hard if you have time to make all these observations while working out.
I kind of agree but I think many of the people playing this game are far better swimmers than I am. I'm pretty oblivious to what is going on beyond my adjacent lanes. Might be something to play during long kick sets. But in our pool, there aren't a lot of people hanging out on the deck for reasons other than to wait for a lane. The only really peculiar behaviour I've seen is the complete opposite of people taking their time to get in the pool. We have this one guy who beelines straight from the locker room to the pool, bellyflops into a lane and sprints for 50 yards... sometimes 100. Then, he gets out, heads straight back to the locker rooms, dresses and leaves. It can be quite a shock if you are swimming in the lane next to the one he enters. IF I saw him coming, I might score 5 yards. Is there a contest for least yards swum before your mark enters the pool?