Everyone In!

Hi. It's Laura

Tri-training is really not the same when you are only training in two disciplines.

It is no secret that I swim at the JCC on the Upper West Side.  It is part of their annual custom to close the pool during Passover for a thorough cleaning.  They were schedule to open yesterday and open they did.

The pool is an endless plethora of training stories.  When the clientele is as arrogant and entitled as they are, drama ensues.  Don’t get me wrong. I am very grateful to have a pool to swim in but I could do without the drama.  The quiet swims are few and far between. When they come my way I embrace them. 

Truth-be-told, I have not been swimming for the last two months. Even before the pool closed for the annual cleaning, I was kind of avoiding it.  I am not a fantastic swimmer and I do not particularly enjoy being wet. I do like bragging about my triathlon accomplishments, so to the pool I go.  Now that it is open I have some work to make up.  I am scheduled in my training to only swim twice a week. Making up the swims should not be too difficult. I just need to swim one extra per week and in two weeks I will be caught up.

The pool reopened Wednesday morning at 5:30 am.  I figured that everyone who has been sitting on the sidelines for the last 8 days is going to be raring to get back in. The plan is to avoid the early morning pre-work hours, late morning & lunch hour rush and head over at a time that has proved to be a tad quiet 2:00PM.  I was wrong.  Seems a lot of people had the same idea.

On the pool deck I saw at least 4 people in every lane. At least one or two more swimmers were standing on the sidelines either getting out or performing the swimmer’s version of Hamlet: “To swim or not to swim? How many people are there?”

I have a race to train for so I had no choice. Regardless of how busy it was, I had to swim.

I did decide that, because it has been two months, I would start off in the medium slow lane. 

The pool is five lanes. Two slow lanes on the outside. In these two lanes people are allowed to do additional things besides swim such as water exercises, jog or walk.

The next two lanes are medium slow and medium fast (this is usually me).  The problem is that people do not like to admit that they are slow. Slow people wind up swimming in the medium fast lanes. They cannot however wind up in the fast lanes because those fast swimmers are really fast and you would be removed immediately.  Medium slow and medium fast is a gray area. 

This is why I am always getting into fights at the pool.  There is nothing worse than building momentum and having a great swim only to be shut down by someone doing the breast stroke or being in the wrong lane. The breast stroke is much slower than freestyle. You almost need to drop down a category to swim the breast stroke in the pool.

Yesterday I wound up swimming in the proper lane, but I watched as someone else's swim was destroyed. 

There were four of us in the lane with potential for one more to enter (who was sitting on the edge of the pool vacillating between swimming in the medium slow or slow lanes.  When I got to the wall to reset between sets, a lady in a gold cap, who had swimming in my lane slowly, decided that, since there was nobody in the fast lane, she was going to swim there.  However, there was someone in the fast lane and she just did not see them or chose not to.  She announced her lane choice allow to everyone that was listening of her decision (which was probably only me).

I was almost shocked at her blatant disregard for anyone else in the pool (then I remembered what my subway rides are like).  Clearly this is not a quiet pool so why do you think it is ok to inconvenience somebody else? Even if it were empty, a fast swimming person could be in that lane at any moment (AND THERE WAS ALREADY A FAST SWIMMER IN THE LANE SHE IGNORED!).

I am very aware of my swimming abilities, both good and bad, and would not dare "cross the line" into the fast lane when I have not been swimming for two months.

As it turns out, the lifeguard who was off duty and swimming herself mentioned that, that particular person, donated somewhere in the neighborhood of $10 million dollars to the JCC. In my opinion, if you have that money to donate, you should build your own pool somewhere else and then you can swim anywhere you want. 

I am not complaining, I am just observing.  I wish I could be that blind sometimes to my environment and the people in it. However, I was raised properly with manners and morals. I am sure there is someone out there at I have offended they just are not blogging about it.

Play hard!

 

Laura