Water Ballerinas

I'm going to preface this post by asking all of you faithful readers to not be offended. I am a strong believer that everyone should and can exercise and I know that not everyone does it how I do.

Which brings me to my pet peeve. Water ballerinas. Like I said, if people have medical issues, swimming can be one of the best ways for them to lose weight, build strength and work up to stronger workouts. Some movement is better than no movement, right?

Fast forward to today. I hop in my lane at the pool and, excuse the pun, dive right into my 2,500 yard workout. I'm not just floating along - I'm working through my strokes (yes people, doing all four - butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke and freestyle), drills and kicking. Mid-swim, there's just a person standing right in the middle of my lane. I almost ran right into her.

Allow me also to say that I swam competitively for ten years. I'm no stranger to sharing lanes, bumping arms and getting kicked every now and then. I honestly don't mind it. But, for God's sake, at least tell me you're jumping in on top of me!

This woman says nothing to me (by the way, pool etiquette is to say hi, ask if someone minds sharing their lane, etc) and starts kicking down the lane... with her noodle. That's right, not a kick board, not a pull buoy, a noodle.

Again, let me sidetrack to say that noodles are very effective rehabilitation tools... but that said, you don't typically DIVE IN THE SAME LANE AS SOMEONE WHO IS DOING SERIOUS SWIMMING!!! There are other lanes (including the lane with the grown men doing handstands) and the shallow end (which is deep enough to do some noodle floating).

The reason this really bothered me was that she started swimming some weird-noodle-backstroke thing that then zig-zagged across the lane. Here I'm trying to do a butterfly set while also figuring out where the hell in the lane this woman is going to end up. I was not a happy camper.

Moral of the story... be considerate when you're in the pool. I never would have thought twice about what this woman was doing in the pool (I commend anyone who is willing to get wet and move around), but when you start to impede someone else's workout, it's just plain rude.