In the swim...

I went for a swim this morning instead of a run. I'm trying to get back into the swing of running every second day as I was before the Mother's Day 4km. With bad weather & a busy schedule since that sunday I have been a bit haphazard about the whole exercise thing.

So trying to get back into a routine I headed up to the indoor pool.When I got to the lap lanes I saw that the 6 lanes each had one swimmer and there were no signs for a slow, medium or fast lanes. So I summed up the abilities of the 6 swimmers and picked one that looked about my pace.

So far so good. I started swimming and noticed the man in my lane was in fact swimming at about the same speed as me. We each had a pause at opposite ends of the lane and at no time were we crashing into each other or being held up. But he surprised me by asking me to 'stick to the right side of the lane and he would stick to the left because he had to keep looking out for me and was worried he was going to crash into me.'

Huh?

If we are going down each side of the lane might we not have to pass each other at some point?

Did he have his eyes shut inside his googles?

Now maybe I don't know the etiquette of lane sharing in Melton, but in the past it was always stick to the left and pick a different lane if you were faster than the others.  I've swum at some really busy pools and I vividly remember the washing machine like turbulence at the Harold Holt pool one morning after a night duty. This particular morning I swam up behind a one legged man and nearly got kicked in the face!

This morning I looked around the lanes and a kind woman told me to come over to her lane as she was nearly finished. That was all good until they closed the lane for the aerobics class. The crazy man had gone by then & I swam a few more laps.

I'm not going to let this incident deter me from swimming again but I will be careful in picking my lane!