Daily Archives: February 16, 2011

I swear I get the craziest looks sometimes when people come up and ask if they can share the lane with me. I usually respond with, “Of course, would you like to circle swim”?

They look at me kinda funny and say, “how about we just split the lane.”

I cringe a little and reply with a “sure why not,” and off I go to continue on with my workout in my tiny little half a lane (usually with a few laps of butterfly, so they know what they are getting themselves into:)).

Maybe I’m overreacting, but its just an irritating a pet peeve of mine.

Here’s why…

I never really thought there was any other way to swim laps than circle swimming when I was swimming competitively because it just seemed so logical. We had to swim 4, 5, 6+ to a lane, and the only way to accomplish this was to circle swim. After I quit, I was a lifeguard at the local pool and swam there occasionally, and I noticed how passionate some people are about circle swimming, silly as it may seem.

I didn’t get it until one day, all 8 lanes were filled up with 16 people, who of course were splitting lanes. This left any new swimmers to hang out on the deck until someone got out or they could convince their counterparts to share the lane and swim in those god awful circles. I’m getting dizzy just thinking about it!

Anyways, this same situation happened to me just the other day. A younger guy pulled the lane split routine on me (surprising because he looked like he swam competitively at some point), and about 10 min later there were 4-5 people on deck looking agitated because all of the lanes were full.

A pool’s capacity is not 2 x the number of lanes, so please make sure you do your part to keep it that way. Its only fair.

Here’s a few easy to follow lap swimming etiquette tips to help…

Pick An Appropriate Lane

When you arrive at the pool if there are no open lanes, scope out the situation and try to choose a lane that has swimmer(s) that are close to your skill level. Some pools will actually designate one side of the pool for slower swimmers and the opposite side for faster swimmers. Just make sure you choose accordingly so you’re not running people over or vice versa.