300 Meters

Or yards, I'm not sure which that pool is.

Yes, I swam last night, just not very far. Nettie swam 75 yards (without stopping to rest half way!) in the lane and who knows how much diving for pennies. (diving for pennies without bright over head light (i.e. the sun) is much more difficult, especially ungoggled as I usually swim.)

There are some definite disadvantages to swimming laps with Nettie. If she is in front of me I have to either kick only or do a catch-up drill* so I don't run her over. And one of my 25s was towing her back to the other end of the pool. (Where else is a girl going to get an extra 50 lbs to pull?) She, obviously, bored with lap swimming quickly but seemed relatively happy diving for pennies while I continued. One problem with the pool, and our timing, is that lots (relatively) of people come to swim after work and don't seem too keen on asking strangers to share a lane.

Allow me to review the evening, then ask you a question:They keep two lanes up in the "lap" pool (oddly the put a lane rope in against the wall, too) and the rest is open and from 10 to close the pool is open for "lap/open swim" (at least in August, could we maybe get a schedule for 2 months at a time??). When Nettie and I arrived there was a person in one lane (lane '2' for reference) and a young couple swimming/flirting just outside the lane (I think the girl was using the lane rope as a guide; they were not flirting/hanging one to each other obnoxiously as the students often do at UA's outdoor pool.) so Nettie and I had a lane to ourselves, which is good because she is slow, splashy, and rest a lot, and if I'm on my back I need lane ropes or a wall to keep me from wandering across the pool. After I finished swimming laps we got out of the lane and moved over to the open area, there was a guy swimming about in what would be the 4th lane over and the young couple mostly just hanging out at the shallow end of lane 3 she occasionally swam down and back. A guy showed up and moved into the lane I'd been swimming in (lane 1). Then two other ladies showed up to swim (in lane 3.5?) and I had Nettie move to the shallow end of lane 5, next to the ramp for chasing pennies. When lane 2 guy left, one of the lane 4 girls was using a kick board so she certainly could have seen that the roped lane was empty but she didn't move. (I know that while one is swimming laps one often doesn't notice when someone in the next lane gets out/in, particularly several lanes over, but when I swim I want to be in a roped lane (see backstroke comment above so if I'm using a kick board and can see what's going on (or paused at the wall), I'd be watching for these things.) Then someone else arrived and took lane 2 and a couple arrived and swam in lane 5 and Nettie was stuck diving for pennies basically right against the ramp (several times my throws actually landed on the ramp) and the shallow part at the end of the ramp. Three feet isn't much of a practice of ones underwater swimming. I did manage one more lap (for a total of 350 yards) right along the wall/ramp but lane 5 guy kind of gave me a bad look. Hey, he and his wife were staying on the line and to the other side of it, I had room. I did my best to keep us out of the way of the lap swimmers (unlike the other kids who were going back and forth between the pools and randomly jumping (but not on people) into the lap pool. BTW, I don't want to do anything but float in the "therapy" pool; 93° water is too warm to even think about moving in.) I just found the unwillingness to share a roped lane, odd.

Did my years (all 4 of them) give me a different view on sharing a lane? Or just give me a high preference for roped lanes even when room exists elsewhere?

We were there about an hour total. Nettie had tons of fun. (Hello, she was with her favorite sister, how could she not?)


*While swimming "freestyle" one are is stationary, always extended forward while the other does a stroke. When the stroking arm completes it's recovery (catches up), they trade places/jobs. To stay behind Nettie I didn't kick.