Saturday, July 19, 2008

Lap Swimmer Anger

I swam for an hour today, which was great. Yesterday my arm was sore for part of the day, and then felt better that night. When I woke up this morning it was a bit sore, so I stretched and stretched and then made sure my pre-swim rinse-off shower* was warm and stretched the muscle under the water. Then I kicked through most of my workout. Sometimes I forget how hard kicking can be when you do 20 laps of kicking in a row. My legs were SORE afterward.

When I got home, I stretched a little more and iced it and so far, so good.

So, not to be all pool ragey, but the guy who got in the lane with me today was kind of annoying. Most of the people who swim at the Y are actually pretty decent swimmers and I generally don't mind sharing a lane at all because everyone knows what they are doing and there are no flailing arms and/or legs and excessive wake or splashing.** All in all it's pretty pleasant.

Today there was one person in every lane and I had put myself in the "Fast" lane because I was faster than everyone else there when I got in and the lane was open. A guy came out and headed straight for the "Fast" lane and got in with me. OK, no problem. Then he started swimming and, I'm just going to say it, he was a lot slower than me. Which is no problem either, I just passed him when I was swimming.

The annoying bit came when I was doing one of my long sets of kicking and every time I tried to pass him, he sped up. He sped up such that he was keeping pace with me and every time his hands hit the water, it would splash in my face. I don't know if it hurt his pride to get lapped by the girl who was just kicking or what, but it was annoying and I would wind up kicking half a lap with my head turned to the side. The good thing is, he couldn't keep up the pace and would eventually have to slow back down so I could pass him. But that whole speeding up thing happened at least four times while we were sharing a lane.

Anyway...

* Actually the Rhode Island Department of Health requires a WARM, NUDE, SOAP shower, as the signs in the locker room proclaim, but considering the majority of the people there don't even rinse off before they get in the pool, I figure my warm little rinse is plenty.

** Except for this one guy who must have heard at some point in his swimming past that when you do a flipturn you're supposed to make sure your calves slap the water AS HARD AS POSSIBLE so that you splash the people two lanes over. Yeah, someone needs to tell him that's really not necessary.

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