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 rolled a 300 today. Great in bowling, but mediocre in this game. An elderly man did the stand-there-staring-at-the-pool thing for a while. I was in the middle of an anaerobic fly set with long intervals. If he had appeared while I was doing something aerobic with less rest time, I could have posted a bigger number.
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.
1200 total fly today, all of it at 200 race pace or faster. That's the 25th time this year I've done at least 1000 fly in a workout. Thank you, please drive through.
You guys aren't working very hard if you have time to make all these observations while working out.
I invite you to come work out with me some day!! I could use a little something else to look at while I'm swimming... :afraid:
If anything, it would be cool to have a teammate for my 7 x 300 Flys set!! :banana: Side note: The last 4 are broken at 150s, 100s, 50s, & 25s...so it's not really that difficult...although the intervals I go on make it fun!!
BTW That Guy...I wasn't able to score anything higher than about 100 today. The same guy walked through the door today, saw me eyeing him... :) And said "I'm not going to let you score much on me today!!" So, in a way, by playing this game, we're actually helping our fellow swimmers get into their workout faster!!
I only scored 325 this morning. Calisthenics Man was in the locker room but I didn't see him in the pool area.
Aahhhh...you beat me again!! 225 was my high score tonight. :banana: It's still a personal best, so nothing to worry about, always room for improvement. I played tonight at the YMCA pool with a guy that is a somewhat regular (about as often as I'm a regular at the YMCA). I saw him come out of the lockerroom, and proceeded to just swim freestyle until he got swimming, lucky for me he wasn't dilly-dallying that much. :) He hopped in the lane with me to swim, and after he and I both stopped at the wall together I let him know I scored 225 points. He was like "HUH???" I explained to him a little about this game. He was just amused, and said that on a normal day I probably would have scored more against him, he was just quicker into the pool tonight.
That Guy and James: Your swim workouts are :afraid:!!! And, congratulations to both of you on your Top Ten rankings for 2010!!!
:bow:
Muchas gracias muchacha!! Me gusta mucho a hacer lo mas dificil que es posible cada dia. Despues de una practica si no estoy respirando fuerte, me dice que no estoy nadando muy duro. Tres mil en cada hora es perfecto para mi!!
Good luck with the espanol!
That Guy and James: Your swim workouts are :afraid:!!! And, congratulations to both of you on your Top Ten rankings for 2010!!!
:bow:
Thanks Elaine! Today I only scored a measly 150, but more importantly, an idea popped into my head during the workout. I came up with one simple way to incorporate the constructive suggestions posted by aquageek, pmccoy, orca1946, and jaadams1. New rule, effective now: every time someone posts something negative about this game or the people playing it, the last score posted gets doubled. Problem, haters? :D
