I thought of this topic while walking back to my car after practice on Friday. Can you think of anything that (possibly) makes your pool or its setting unique? Here's my example: there's a fee for parking on campus at the U of Washington, so I park on the street in neighborhood just off campus when I swim there. The walk between the car and the pool involves crossing a drawbridge, so sometimes after practice we are delayed for a few minutes while the drawbridge is up!
The other pool I use, at San Jose State, is slightly longer than 50m.
Is it 55 yards? They built quite a few pools that length back in the day. 50 meters is very close to 164 feet, by the way, so a 55 yard pool is just about one foot longer.
My pool is built on top of a sewage treatment plant! The plant itself was built out over the Hudson River, which means the pool sits on "land" that didn't exist 20 years ago.
Because of weight constraints, the 50M pool is a uniform 4ft in depth. When it first opened there were meets there, and you had to be careful not to go too deep on the dives (or backstroke starts). Eventually they took out the starting blocks and stopped having meets, which was probably wise.
en.wikipedia.org/.../Riverbank_State_Park
The most interesting is the 20 yard pool at WPI that is in the basement.
How much faster do you typically swim a 100 in this pool compared to a 25 yard pool?
:) I like this one. I actually have 3 pools that I train in. The most interesting is the 20 yard pool at WPI that is in the basement. I still can't get used to writing workouts where a 100 ends at the other end of the pool! Frequently, I will find a well-planned workout ends up on the "wrong end" of the pool.
My pool is 6 lane x 25 yards, 3 1/2 feet at the shallow end to 12 feet at the deep end. So far...it's unique from everyone else's pools described above because it's close to NORMAL!! :D The truly unique part is the admission cost. The high school doesn't charge us to use it during the school year...which is a big plus. One reason I can swim. :)
Sorry, not unique enough.......mine is very normal too. 25 yd x 25m (11 lanes) 6ft to 12ft deep, and costs about $20 per month, so pretty cheap!
However it is either almost empty - sometimes there's just me in the whole pool, or when the school or club come in, it is completely packed with 6 or more swimmers in each of the 9 lanes and the public in the 2 remaining ones!
1. My main pool has a giant wall of windows that looks out on a lake - maybe not unique but nice!
2. My "spare" pool (circa 1920) is 4 lanes wide and used to be 33.3 yards long. At some point the Y decided to make it into two separate pools so now a wall with a 5-foot wide walkway divides the 25yd pool from a shallow "learning" pool that uses the remainder
3. My rarely used, once in a great while pool is at WPI and evidently Mike Ross swims there. I'm hearing talk about a master's team starting up at WPI, so this may be my main pool soon...hope so!
2 to 4 seconds at 70% speeds.
The fun part of the 20 yard pool is going under 10 seconds in a 20. Since my mind still equates one length with 25 yards, I come away thinking "I went under 10 seconds from a push". I haven't bothered to correct my mind.
Mike,
I belong to a health club that has an indoor 20 meter pool that I love for sprint workouts. Perfect length for racing your training partner 10 X 20 on the 1:00. We also time each other (starting the watch when the head goes under water). Hard as I try, I haven't been able to go under 10 seconds. My best recently was 10.25. I also love getting my heart rate up without any lactates going 10 X 20 fly on :30.
I'm very spoiled. The club is 2 miles from my house and also has an outdoor 25 meter pool that is kept open all year. Excellent sight seeing in the summer.
Also, 2 miles from my house is a high school pool where my training partner is the coach and 4-5 of us have the pool to ourselves at the noon hour. We sometimes set up the timing system with the pads on the side walls and time our breakouts to 42'. Big fun.
And in the summer I have access to a deep, crystal clear 50 meter pool 2.5 miles from my house where a group of masters swim from 11:30 to 1:00. I've never had to swim with more than one other person in my lane.
I count my blessings every day.
Rich
The pools I grew up practicing in, and the ones today are pretty standard. I currently do some workouts in an old university pool that was built in the 40's. It is 32 yards long. The extra seven yards per lenght really drains you if you are used to a standard 25.
However, While swimming USA swimming growing up, I went to at least one, most of the time two meets per year in the summer in louisville at Lakeside Swim Club. It is amazing, and still the most unique pool I have ever been to. It was designed to look like an open quarry (it may have been a quarry at one time?). It has a 50 meter pool and a 25 meter pool that make up about 10% of the total water area. They rest is recreational swimming, raft areas, zero incline children areas, diving areas and so on. It really is beautiful. It has large cliffs surrounding the water area, and it is all natural stone. The host several masters meets and open meets per year, so if you are in the area look them up and go. I never had the best times there, I usually spent my down time floating around on a raft in the sun, instead of resting in the shade.
Ohhh! I love swimming at Lakeside! It's an open water pool racing venue!!!! It also has the retro-old club feel to it!
Central Indiana hosts a mecca of amazing swimming pools! There are 5 high schools with-in a 30 minute drive of my house that have fairly new 50 meter indoor natatoriums. There are numerous other high schools that have decent 8 lane 25 yd/meter pools. I belong to a community center with a rarely crowded and pristinely clean 25 yd. pool and water park, and my master's team has a beautiful outdoor 50 meter pool with a fantastic diving facility.
If I ever start complaining please remind me of my blessings! :angel:
How much faster do you typically swim a 100 in this pool compared to a 25 yard pool?
2 to 4 seconds at 70% speeds.
The fun part of the 20 yard pool is going under 10 seconds in a 20. Since my mind still equates one length with 25 yards, I come away thinking "I went under 10 seconds from a push". I haven't bothered to correct my mind.
