i really don't understand why girls have to get so defensive and personal when it comes to sports. david and i went to the rec center to swim some laps for our tri training. we started out swimming in the same lane until a girl joined us, then david went to another lane (he isn't fast enough yet to swim with 3+ people in the lane, although he has come a very long way in the 4-5 wks he's been swimming!!) so i'm swimming along, doing my freestyle 1200m, and the girl who joined our lane was doing freestyle with her arms but breaststroke with her legs...i'd never seen this before, and she was going pretty slow.
ok, just to quickly go over the courtesy rules for lane swimming with 2+ swimmers: you always stay on the right side of the blue tile line on the bottom of the pool. you swim down the right side of the lane, and when you reach the wall and turn around, you swim down the other right side of the lane, so you're swimming in sort of a circle. if someone is swimming at a faster pace than you, and you feel then touch your toe while swimming, that's usually a polite indication to a. slow down your pace even more so that person can easily pass you, or b. when you reach the wall, wait a few seconds so the faster person can pass you at the wall. this gets real fun when there are 4+ people in the lane. i've had a few head-on collisions. so anyway, this is nothing against any other swimmer, saying they aren't good enough or aren't fast enough--it's not personal, it's just common lap lane etiquette.
so this girl was doing a cross between two stroke styles, and her pace was slower than mine. there were a few times i tagged her foot and attempted to pass her. every time i sped up to pass, she sped up, too. she would match her speed with mine, make her legs swing out bigger so they were nearly kicking me, and her hands were getting close enough to my face to rip off my goggles. so i would get right back behind her, slow my pace, and just try to pass her at the wall. there was even one time i sat at the wall until she was 1/3 of the way down the lane, then i kicked off and started swimming again...this was not even enough of a time lapse to keep her in front of me. i still tagged her foot to let me pass. she wouldn't have it. then another lady joined our lane. so in addition to trying to pass this cat of a girl, i now would have to watch out for oncoming traffic as i was trying to pass. i finally sprinted my last full lap, swam side by side with the cat for probably 25m, we both reached the wall at the same time, she looked over at me with a look of death, and i kicked off like there was no tomorrow to make sure i would keep her behind me. when i finished david asked what was going on--why couldn't i pass her? he could see i was keeping a faster pace than her, and every time i tried to pass, i just didn't. i explained the whole thing, which he thought was crazy. he told me while he was resting in between laps he saw she was behind me and must have hit my foot, so she stood up in the lane, threw her arms out, and looked around as if to say, "what's going on here?!" i don't know what was going on.
needless to say, i got a great workout. i really hope we have all boys--i can't handle catty girls who take things personally...
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