Every runner has run into problems with cyclists. You might love them, you might be one of them when you’re not running. But when you’re running down the sidewalk, street, path and out of nowhere pops a manic cyclist with their dang bell that you can’t hear through your ipod, well, they seem like nothing more than a dinky, but dangerous, car. Personally, it always makes me wonder why they don’t just find a way to stay out of the way of runners since they are faster and consider themselves more agile. I’ve almost gotten hit many a time, especially when I’m down by the Potomac.
But actually, this is a story about swimming.
Last night I went over to the public pool at Eastern Market and got in to do some laps. I was the first person in the slow lane and after I had completed a few laps in glorious solitude, a girl came over and joined me. First of all, I know that some people don’t have any other bathing suit than a bikini, but it really does look stupid in an indoor public pool. Just saying. Then she started doing weird laps – not swimming but kind of walking back and forth in the lane. It took me a while to realize that she was running underwater and it just looked like she was walking because of the resistance. I finally asked her if she was a runner, hoping to gain some great training secret for my triathlon. But she just told me that she was a runner and she was injured, so this helped her maintain her cardio while she couldn’t run. Great. I was all sympathy for my fellow runner, my fellow champion of the pavement.
But we weren’t on the pavement, we were in a 3-4 foot wide lane in a swimming pool and when 2 other people came in our lane (who, by the way, were definitely not slow swimmers, but I decided to find solidarity with them as well), I expected her to move. Not like I thought she would, more like I thought she should. And I thought she’d figure it out, but she didn’t. she kept going back and forth on one side, making us swim around her, almost making me crash into another swimmer once or twice. And she was not going all the way back to the end of the lane when she was done, presumably so that we couldn’t ask her to get the heck out of our lane. There is an area of the pool for people not swimming laps and I really wished that she would move there. I know that when I do my triathlon there will be other people in the water, but probably not going in all different directions? Also the fact that I’m training for my triathlon, not READY for my triathlon, makes a big difference in how I approach working with other people in my workouts. I also realize that not everyone is training for a triathlon, some people are training for other events and some people are just there because they can swim and like to show off. But somewhere in there, we have to find respect for everyone and this chick was definitely not doing it. Therefore, she was the bicycle in our lane and I really wanted to just knock her bell off, if you know what I mean. I’ll share the road with you, but let’s get some space in the lane.
No comments:
Post a Comment