Overtaking in the slow lane

No, not an illegal move on the motorway, but a realisation that I am slightly faster than a lot of the other people who swim in the slow lane in the pool. Which is satisfying and annoying all at the same time!

I was at the pool again last night, desperate as I am to tone up and lose some more weight and just generally get fitter before I even think about finding a pretty white frock. The new regime and a desire to see if I could beat Monday’s time helped tremendously, and I headed off to the pool after work despite feeling like I could fall asleep on the bus.

Thursday is a general public swimming day (unlike Monday which is ladies only) and as such the pool was pretty busy. When you are trying to time your swim this is very frustrating as you can easily get bogged down in other people, so I try and use the lanes to prevent that. There were about 5 other people in the slow lane with me for most of the time I was there, and while I was a match speed wise for a couple of them, I was certainly faster than the rest, not by much, but enough to be almost swimming on top of them.

Most of my lengths I managed to do with no one in front of me, which was excellent as I could swim at my pace or go faster if I wanted to. A couple of the women though would stop and chat at the shallow end, not only getting in my way when I turned (if you want to swim a bit then chat, you should really go in the main bit of the pool, if you ask me!), but also choosing the moment I was just coming towards them to swim off again, and frankly then getting in my way.

I try and be tolerant because I’m slow and used to be the really slow one, and it’s good that they are there doing anything at all. But it is starting to annoy me. I am no where near fast enough for the fast lane, but feel that it will be difficult to improve when I constantly get stuck behind people.

So, as the title of this entry suggests, I did end up overtaking last night, twice! I’m not sure what the etiquette of this is in a smallish pool, but I’m sure it’s better form than swimming over someone, which is what I felt I would have done. It was too frustrating to swim at the pace these people were and I felt that it would bugger up my times too much too.

I think, ultimately, I am going to have to find another pool and have been investigating joining the University sports centre in town as an alternative. As I teach a class through their Open Learning centre I can get a staff rate for membership and it might just work out cheaper than using the public pools. I just don’t know if it will be any less busy or frustrating!!

Despite all this perceived slowing down and a general tiredness that seemed to sweep over me in the first 10 lengths, I did do my 40 lengths, and I did do them slightly faster than on Monday – which I was surprised about! I think having a time to beat helped, as did the fact that I can’t pause the Sportcount so I don’t feel I can stop at all. Small steps and all that, but at this rate I’ll be down to 30 minutes for the 40 lengths in no time and be upping myself to 50!

I slightly buggered up stopping the Sportcount last night so don’t actually know what my fastest lap was, but I’ll say it was the first, which I have a rough idea of the time of:

40 lengths
32.20.13 minutes (woohoo, nearly a minute faster!)
Average time for a length: 47.34 seconds
Fastest length: 1 at around 38 second, I’m guessing
Slowest length: 37 at 56.08 seconds, but I was stuck behind a slow person I couldn’t overtake on this one.

So a faster average time for a length, a faster fast length and an overall faster time. I’m pretty pleased with that!

I have realised though that I desperately need to get a new swimming costume as the fabric in my current one is going bald in patches. Not good. I’ve seen one I like on the Bravissimo website (a sporty one that actually goes up to my size!), but as I also need a new sports bra and just can’t afford both I’m going to have to have a good long think about which is the more necessary!