SubscribeThis morning I arrived at the Y for a nice quiet distance and tempo swim. I wanted to do 4km and push my pace and figured that the Y on holiday hours at 8am on Christmas day would be a ghost-town.
I arrived and looked at the pool as I walked by: Heaven! Completely empty, save for the lonely-looking lifeguard. This was going to be amazing. 😉
A few minutes later I was walking out onto the deck of the pool. Swimp3, lap counter, water bottle, swim cap, all ready to go. “What the F#$@!” I think to myself. 3 of 4 lanes are suddenly occupied! Well at least I get a lane to myself to get my hustle going.
About 30 laps into my 110, another person shows up and hops into the “fast” lane (i.e. where myself and 1 other person had been happily splitting the lane), time to swim in circles. Oh my, this is going to be painful.
You see, I’m not a fast swimmer, by any stretch of the imagination. (Today I did 3780m in 85 minutes = .74m/s = not fast.) But I’m significantly faster than an old lady slowly doing breast-strokes or some guy who’s thrashing around in the water, trying to crawl, but his face never hits the water.
I figure “ok, I’ll just slowly (slowly) work on technique”. Long strokes, puppet elbow on recovery, good corkscrew, kicking in the right place, etc… “What the @#$!!” I nearly swam over the other 2 people in the lane (multiple times), but I can’t swim any slower… I’m trying to swim slowly, very slowly, very mindfully, and I just can’t go slower.
Fortunately the other guy gives up after 20 minutes or so and we go back to splitting the lane. Ahh! The lack of frustration is wonderful! 🙂
A few other people come and go during my 85 minutes, but they quickly move over to the slow lane when they realize that I’m going to be lapping them on every other lap.
Then just as I think it’s clear sailing to my 110th lap (around the 105 mark), 3 people show up. 3 _slow_ people show up, hop in the fast lane and bogart the rest of my workout. I just gave up. I had lots of steam left, lots left in my body for doing 5 more, but not the will to fight the frustration of splitting lanes with plodders.
So, I ask, how do you handle plodding people in the fast lane when it’s clear (at least to you and it’s unclear how it isn’t to them), that they really should move over?
FWIW, if the slow lane hadn’t had a lot of people in it, I would have just moved over there and split the lane with whoever was there, but it was even more slammed than my coveted fast lane…
by Simone, on December 25 2010 @ 2:09 pm
all you have to do is politely ask THEM to move over! after you lap them once or twice! also possibly tell them you are training for a competition. and if all that fails inform the lifeguard and he should have the authority and act on the situation. that's how I would handle it.