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!
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.
Yeah, I've heard about this and always wanted to see it. My understanding is that it was a quarry at one time. It seems like the water would be awfully cold!
My suburblet has three outdoor pools- one open year-round, and two seasonal pools. The unique one would probably be the 'swamp pool' that's open in the summers. The pool itself is the generic nice 8 lanes x 25 yards with a bathouse done in Creole-style. (ie. looks kind of Cape Cod, but with a big front porch). What's different is the 75 yard boardwalk from pool to parking lot that cuts through wetlands- lots of swamp plants, anoles and other small lizards sunning themselves on the sides of the boardwalk, many a butterfly and small bird hanging out nearby.
The year round pool is an ordinary 4 lane- 25 meter square (original developer was German, so the first two pools he put in were SCM) and is probably most notable for birds- common for raptors to nest in the oak trees nearby, and it's also on the final approach for a lot of Eglin AFB military and civilian traffic. Back when I used to swim mid-mornings, I actually started noticing when Delta's 10:10 flight from Atlanta was arriving later than scheduled.
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.
Yeah, I've heard about this and always wanted to see it. My understanding is that it was a quarry at one time. It seems like the water would be awfully cold!
It is not any more cold than most pools. It has steady depth ranging in about 8-10', except in the diving areas - so it is not too deep throughout. Of course I am basing this on memory and it has been 12 or 13 years since I was last there.
