Thursday, December 24, 2009

Share and Share Alike


128 Days

I like to think that my parents raised me well. I learned not to hit girls unless they're related to you or deserve it and that if I don't have anything nice to say not to say anything at all until the person you're going to talk bad about leaves. They also taught me to share. Now I think that I share pretty good but there are some things that I hate to share with anyone namely my 49ers mug, DVD's (these never come back in one piece if at all) and the Boston Cream Pie that Kati makes for me when I've been good (I rarely get this pie). But most of all I hate to share swim lanes. If you're at an official natatorium where actual swim metes take place then the lanes are usually pretty wide and are therefore more conducive to sharing. But at the local gym pool they tend to use cheap lane dividers and the lanes are only about 4 feet wide. What ends up happening is that when the person swimming in the next lane is bigger than you are your lane starts to shrink just from their waves pushing against the lane dividers. This makes doing your swim set difficult enough but throw another person in the lane and it becomes down right impossible.

Before we get into my story let's discuss pool etiquette.

1. Never just get into a lane that another person is using without asking them first even if you have to wait until they are done with their set.
2. If I didn't ask for your opinion about my stroke then I don't want to hear it.
3. I'm not here to coach you I'm here to swim my own set.
4. I have a hard enough time getting into the cold pool to start my set so please bring your kick turn down a notch so that I can get wet at my own pace.
5. Appropriate swim attire please. Not every one was meant to wear a Speedo.

So last week I had a simple swim workout that I had to do during lunch at the local 24 Hour Fitness. This is not the usual location that I use and didn't know that they only had three lanes to begin with and there were two of us going. Luckily while we were changing there were two lanes that opened up so we snagged them. Just as I was about to get in I saw a poacher that was about to get into my friends lane. I told him that I didn't think that was a great idea because it was the outside lane and had the ladder that one of them was sure to run into at some point. He asked if he could share my lane and reluctantly I agreed. Now that it's been established that we are going to be sharing a lane the question arises as to how we are going to swim, are we going to go with the whole I stay on the right side and he stays on the left or are we going to do it so that we always stay to our right so that one side ends up being the down lane and the other side is the back lane. The second system only works if both of you swim at approximately the same pace or after a while you end up on the other person's heels and you have to hope that the person is somewhat considerate to let you pass at the wall. Unfortunately we went with this system and about every 300 yards I was right up on him luckily he did let me pass.

The other problem with sharing a narrow lane is that you risk contact when passing. This could be a simple brush of shoulders, hitting hands when you both go to stroke at the same time or the worst is a meeting of the minds when one of you isn't paying attention and you run smack dap into each other. We had kind of a combination of both hitting hands and heads. I was doing one of my technique drills where you swim with your hands in fists to learn that your stroke consists of more than just your hands and that you can use your entire arm. So I'm making my way down the lane and am preparing for our pass by getting as far over as I can. when I go to stroke the timing was perfect and I punched to poor schmuck right in the head. We both popped up and did the obligatory "Are you OK?", "Fine, and you?"," Fine" and then we were on our way again. Now this made the rest of the workout awkward because now I'm concentrating on not colliding with the guy again instead of what I should be focusing on.

I guess the moral of this story is don't share a lane with me or you'll get out in worse shape than when you got in. Apparently I'm an abusive swimmer.

2 comments:

JothMilina said...

Isn't that consider sport specific training

Jill Brown said...

I agree with Jonathan - aren't you also supposed to be training on how to survive a mass swim start. In that case the swimming with fists might be a good technique.
I am proud that you did learn how to share even if it was short lived.