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April 24, 2007

The Swimming Lady

Swimming training is always an interesting event... and yesterday was no exception.  I swam continuously, only to stop twice and took my space at the far end of the pool where no-one normally swims, so that I wouldn't have to fight anyone for space.  I don't know whether others took this as a sign to swim there as well, but the pool got fairly busy fairly quick after I got in.  An older woman joined me in my lane, which wasn't much of an issue as I counted my laps and did various mathematical calculations with each lap number.  Its a way to keep my mind busy without thinking too much about other things which causes me to lose concentration on my swim technique.

Right, back to this female swimmer.  She was swimming breaststroke all of the time and as I approached my second length past her, she stopped (thankfully it was in the shallower side of the pool) and tapped me on my shoulder (first of two stops).  I stopped and then nearly fell over again.

"Could you please not wet my hair as you swim?" came the request from the woman. Astonished at the fact that someone could come to the pool (which is a TRAINING pool) and make such a request I looked at her for a second and without realising answered with a "You do realise this is a pool?" which was probably a little cruel.  Probably more blunt than I should've done, but she stormed off with a "I'm going to speak to the lifeguards.".

I carried on swimming and during a short break saw the lifeguard talking to this woman with a suppressed smile on his face.  Shortly after she stormed off again (I can't describe it in any other way).  It was about 6 lengths later that I received a tap on the shoulder.  The manager of the pool requested that I don't splash her - if I felt like playing around I should go to the part where there are no lanes.  I in turn, informed him that I didn't splash her, that I was merely swimming in the lane and as I passed her during my training, some drops of water inevitably was going to make it to her hair.  For a few seconds it looked like he didn't know what I was talking about, but then a lightbulb went on and he looked at her.

"You DO realise this is a pool and that you ARE going to get WET?  She is on the training side and if her training requires her to swim crawl, she doesn't have to change to swim breaststroke just because you don't want your hair wet?" 

The manager said a few more things that were slightly more blunt than anything I could've said, but he clearly felt that she wasted his time and I'm sure he was just returning her attitude that she displayed earlier.  She took off again and went to the desk where I'm pretty sure she tried to cancel her membership.  I'm not sure I could ever understand anyone that goes to a pool and think that their hair wouldn't get wet.  If she wanted it to stay dry so badly she could've gotten a cap or something, but she striked me as someone that always got their way in some way or another and couldn't accept that she didn't get it here.

I also spotted a particularly hairy man in the pool, but that's a story for another time.

Posted by karinm at 7:31 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

April 18, 2007

Early Morning Madness

This morning at 5:30 my alarm woke me up and I killed it. I got to bed too late last night and I wasn't about to lose out on some sleep. I cuddled up behind Andy and dozed for another hour... so much for sleeping. He got up and ready for work - at 7am I was sat in front of the television with a huge mug of coffee, watching The Emperor's New School and itching to do something energetic. So I got dressed and headed out the door with a pair of sunglasses to hide my eyes from the brightness of the emerging summer's sun.

Outside it was already really busy and my heartrate monitor probably didn't realise that I was running as it didn't pick up my heartrate for the first 10 minutes of my run. I hopped onto the footpath that went past behind our house ... you only have to run about half a mile before you hit some sports fields and this morning I was going to do a "boring run around the fields". As it turns out that wasn't a good idea :)

I got to the fields only to find that the whole county's dogs and their owners were there, waking up and getting some exercise. I've found that most people can control their dogs, ran past the first few and found that these were not those. I suddenly had 5 dogs in tow, running with me as they must've thought that I was playing with them. Ten meters or so behind them were the owners ... it took me about 100m before I stopped and as each dog owner gathered his friend up, breathed a bit. I wonder how long I would've had to run/fear for my life before the dogs would've given up and run back by themselves?

I checked my watch a few miles later and at that moment it was showing the actual time and not the time run... it was only 7:19 ... I ran for a few more minutes when the lightbulb went on and I realised that I was wearing the only watch in the whole house that wasn't adjusted for DST. Great :) I had to be at work at 9 and it was already 8:25 ... thankfully I wasn't far from home and I got home with a huge smile on my face as the builders shook their heads at me.

Posted by karinm at 9:37 AM | Comments (0)