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?)
I'm usually the one on the deck, or strolling in late. Sometimes I miss the entire warmup (which is almost always 1000 yards for the masters group), I almost always miss 200-400 yards of it.
I like how you think! I get there as soon as my crazy life lets me get there! And I have long hair! (Takes a bit longer to get in the cap) - so my little game is to see how fast I can catch up on all the yardage people supposedly have on me - kinda like I give them a handicap - and at the end we compare "scores" - oh, you got in 15 minutes before me and stayed 15 minutes longer? How far? Gee, I only did 1500 more than you did! (Not that I get to say the last sentence out loud!!)
My other favorite is watching the people who must have a lane to themselves. Bless them, they are trying to be polite, but if we have a workout going on with 5 people in a lane for 4 lanes, one kinda slow lane with three people & the other 3 lanes are for noodlers, they really ought to just jump in & swim right? But they will waste almost their entire lunch hour waiting for a lane to clear. Some days we have pity on them & invite them to come in & circle with us (they always refuse) but most of the time - we just wonder why they bothered to change into their suits!
*just a side note - our "workout" is just a bunch of us who choose to workout together, no coach, no fees, no real structure, and we do not have reserved lane space - ever.
I'm usually the one on the deck, or strolling in late. Sometimes I miss the entire warmup (which is almost always 1000 yards for the masters group), I almost always miss 200-400 yards of it.
I like how you think! I get there as soon as my crazy life lets me get there! And I have long hair! (Takes a bit longer to get in the cap) - so my little game is to see how fast I can catch up on all the yardage people supposedly have on me - kinda like I give them a handicap - and at the end we compare "scores" - oh, you got in 15 minutes before me and stayed 15 minutes longer? How far? Gee, I only did 1500 more than you did! (Not that I get to say the last sentence out loud!!)
My other favorite is watching the people who must have a lane to themselves. Bless them, they are trying to be polite, but if we have a workout going on with 5 people in a lane for 4 lanes, one kinda slow lane with three people & the other 3 lanes are for noodlers, they really ought to just jump in & swim right? But they will waste almost their entire lunch hour waiting for a lane to clear. Some days we have pity on them & invite them to come in & circle with us (they always refuse) but most of the time - we just wonder why they bothered to change into their suits!
*just a side note - our "workout" is just a bunch of us who choose to workout together, no coach, no fees, no real structure, and we do not have reserved lane space - ever.
