I’m not a strong swimmer but thoroughly enjoy my early morning weekly dip in the local pool. Despite a creaking shoulder and consequent escapology skills required to get in and out of my cossie and the interminable drying of short but thick hair afterwards, it is well worth the effort. Unlike other sports I always feels exhilarated after a good swim and ready to face the day with new gusto especially after a cup of tea and a bowl of Shreddies.
You can’t really get a decent swim with a pool full of kids so like many others I always opt for lane swims. Boring though this may sound, this does mean you have more space with fewer collisions. What you may not realize, unless you lane swim regularly, is that there appears to be a sort of lane swimming etiquette which is advisable to follow.
Rule 1 – Attire
Swim hats and goggles are as popular with the splendid speedy crawl swimmers (of which I am most envious), as much as the slower breaststroke brigade. You won’t see the average lane swimmer sporting ‘Bay Watch’ beach attire. They aren’t here to pout and pose, they just want to get on with it, so plain and practical is the name of the game.
Rule 2 – Direction
Boards at the end of each lane indicate which direction you should swim in round the rectangle of your lane – usually clockwise. Unfortunately, occasionally a pool attendant will place the board the wrong way round implying that you should be swimming in an anti-clockwise direction. This can cause chaos because regulars will ignore it, but newbies won’t!
Rule 3 – Speed
The 25m pool is divided by ropes into thirds providing lanes for different speeds of swimmer – slow, medium and fast. If you are new to a particular pool, it may not be until you’ve splashed about a bit that you can judge which speed lane you should be in.
Obviously in each lane there will always be a fastest and slowest swimmer. Ideally you don’t want to be that much faster than your lane buddies because you’ll have the tedious business of overtaking them on a regular basis. Similarly, if you are much slower than your buddies, you’ll be like an elderly Sunday driver as frustrated swimmers must move out to take the center lane to pass you. It is a bit like following an aquatic Highway Code.
For many years I frequented the medium lane, managing 40 lengths breaststroke. My first thirty lengths were of a reasonable speed but if I found I was really flagging during the last ten lengths and conscious of holding ‘up the traffic’, I’d dive under the rope into the slow lane to finish off. Since the words shoulder replacement loomed recently, I’ve sadly been forced into the slow lane on a permanent basis along with a swimming float. Whether I’ll ever be able to sneak back to my favoured middle lane again remains to be seen.
Rule 4 – All change
Some weeks, especially in the warmer months when the ‘summer softies’ return, the middle medium lane of the pool might be particularly busy so there is insufficient space to accommodate all the medium speed swimmers. To avoid an aquatic traffic jam the excess swimmers will have to divert into the fast or slow lanes on either side. This complicates things because now the average speed in the fast lane will be slower and in the slow lane it will be faster than normal!
Rule 5 – Parallel pair
If the pool is quiet (often at the beginning and end of a session) and there are only two swimmers in your lane, it is unnecessary to adhere to the irritating rectangle rule because two swimmers can just plough up and down in parallel without changing sides at the end of each length. Regulars are adept at doing the necessary sign language to indicate this, but sometimes a newbie isn’t aquatically bilingual or will be too law abiding and insist on skirting the rectangle unnecessarily, so you are reluctantly forced to follow suit.
Rule 6 – Swimming Style
Style wise, most of the latter opt for the ducking and diving head routine being keen to avoid a stiff neck. Alas, in the slow lane there always seems to be an exception to this, where a raised coiffured head inadvisedly protrudes above the water line. Sadly this lane also attracts pairs of females who are not only perplexingly swimming at a vertical angle, but choose to swim along side each other in order to maintain their non-stop conversational prattle, thus clogging up the whole lane. Only firm restraint prevents me from pointing out the virtues of the nearby cafe where conversation with a cafe latte can cordially combine until closing time!
So, there you have it, and you thought you just had to jump in and swim!
