Pool Length Differences

Today I dropped the g/f off the airport so she can head to a conference in the Keystone State...I'm surprised at how many state nicknames I know. That involved driving across the city, as is usually the case in every city I've lived in, to get to the airport and back. The worst was probably Pittsburgh, just a job interview, but the airport is like 45 minutes away from the city. They rented a car for me and said it was cheaper than having me take a cab.

Since I have a Metro YMCA membership (a YMCA membership that has good fashion sense and would probably use hair gel if it had hair...Considering my YMCA is right near "The Hill" or the Italian part of St. Louis, I think the YMCA needs a Guido membership where they do your laundry while you work out but you're only allowed to lift weights and walk on the treadmill...no pool or group classes. They would have to charge extra due to extra hair gel clean up and you're on your own for tanning), I decided to check out the pool at another YMCA. This one has either a 25 meter or 27 meter configuration...27 meters is an odd length...25 is also odd...ha...ha...27 meters is a weird length unless there is pool standard out there for which I might look for later.

Another unusual thing about this pool is that one of the swim lanes, when configured for 27 meters, is taken away when one of the instructors decides to have the little kids jump off the diving board. Luckily it wasn't busy and no one was in the middle lane when they wanted to use the diving board. 

Up until today, I thought the pool I normally swim at was 25 meters since the sign said 64 lengths is a mile...1600m /  25m = 64. After this morning I am certain it is 25 yards since my times were way off even when I tried to account for the extra 2 meters. One thing that sucked even more is that the pace clock is fast...verified by two watches and a wall clock...unless the pool happens to be in a time warp and time slows down at the pool. I'm going with the pace clock being fast even though I did take modern physics in college and believe that stuff like time warps, black holes and string theory are real. 

The pool I normally swim in...and yes I go down the water slide when it's open.

If you prefer an underwater view here is a view from my new GoPro Hero2 

Anyway, I decided not to pay attention to my time and just swim my sets at the effort I normally do. It's amazing how much of a difference the extra 4.5 yards each length makes. 

My swim workout for today was a total of 2200. I stuck to the same number of laps even though a 400m set would only require 15 lengths of the 27 meter pool. I guess it's a good way to trick yourself into swimming a little bit more. I ended up swimming 2376 meters or just a hair under 2600 yds. I'll definitely be back at this pool again with a waterproof watch. 

Seriously, who steals your towel?