A slow crawl

23/03/2013 at 3:50 pm | Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Get out of my way!

After a work- and PhD-related sabbatical, I intend to be back blogging regularly. Since I last blogged I’ve swum in some interesting new places: Mojacar on the Almeria coast, The Shelbourne hotel in Dublin, Pennyhill Park spa, the new Ironmonger row (including the spa plunge pool) and, er, Kings Hall leisure centre in Clapton.

However, I’m not going to discuss any of that in today’s post. Instead I’m going to wonder why fast swimmers use slow and medium lanes. Given that lane-blocking, by people who are too slow for the lane they are in, is a recurring moan from regular swimmers, I wonder why they don’t recognise that it works the other way. It’s really, really offputting to have someone constantly overtaking you, or hogging the middle lane and it’s usually completely unnecessary. If you’re too fast for the slow or medium lane, go one up! You might be irritated by somebody’s sedate breast stroke but, if they’re in the slow lane, they have NOWHERE SLOWER TO GO.

I know it’s not always straightforward. Lane pace changes depending on who’s in the pool and the medium lane is by definition inconclusive (neither ‘fast’ nor ‘slow’). And sometimes it’s me. My breast stroke is suddenly noticeably faster than most of the swimmers in the slow lane, so I move to the medium. And sometimes, when I do that, I find I’m holding people up because they’re all swimming crawl. But you know what? When that happens, I move back to the slow lane. Nobody laughed at me for trying to be considerate. Well, maybe they did, but I can’t see well through my goggles.