You can always tell what time of year it is at the Y by how crowded it is. There is always a bit of a spike upward in people coming to work out right after Thanksgiving and right after New Years. For Thanksgiving, it's post-turkey guilt--the whole "holy cow I ate an entire large bird myself?!?" syndrome. After New Years, it's the "well, I made a resolution to be in better shape this year so I might as well go and work out some." Usually these spikes last about a week and a half, two weeks.
Tonight at the Y was one of those nights. Usually when I swim laps in the late afternoon/early evening, there is next to no competition for the lap lane. At most, I've had to share with one other person. I've found in most cases, everyone is very generous and will share the lane with you. But I always go out of my way to acknowledge the person swimming laps first and ask if I can share with them. It's just swimmer courtesy.
Not so much tonight. I got into the pool first and had the lap lane (the other two were taken by swim team) all to my lonesome little self. Then a guy shows up and asks if I'd mind sharing. I don't and we agree on the best way to split the lane. Swimming along and sharing the lane when suddenly two people who I've never seen before show up. Before we can get down to at least figure out the best way to share, they're in and swimming. Now, this is a huge problem since one of these is an older guy who swims SLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW and takes his half down the middle. as I find out. Also, the girl who jumped in has no clue how the whole circle swimming works and so she's creating havoc.
Finally after the old slow down the middle guy makes me run into the wall because he can't be bothered to a)wear goggles (sorry but if you share a lane you MUST wear goggles..no if's, an's or but's!) and b)observe there are others in the lane with him, I stopped and asked him to please make sure he stayed on his half so I wouldn't run into the wall again (which have I mentioned--kind of painful!). At this point, you'd've thought I'd asked him to turn over his first born child to be a Bama fan or something else truely horrific.
I tried to be polite...I really, really did.
I can only take consolation in the fact that we probably won't see these two in the lap lanes for long.
posted by Michael Hickerson at 11/29/2004 07:27:00 PM |
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