Shamu harshed my mellow.

chris malone

 So I'm doing the work this morning, feeling sleek and this guy jumps in in the lane next to me just as I'm doing my, um, open turn. This dude is a good 265 lbs, and not an NFL defensive end 265. More a of a travel on business a lot 265. And he doesn't slip in, it's like a cannonball, right next to my head. So I'm thinking, nice work Shamu, I'll get you a bucket of menhaden. Just knock it off.   

Off I go and I figure I'm not going to see him for a while. But halfway through the 25 he flies by me, bang, hits a big flip turn like he was trying to drench the crowd and he's gone. Back and forth like this for a warm up of about 500. Then he got to work.  Meanwhile, I'm trying to keep up and end up thrashing around like Dennis Quaid in the quarry scene in "Breaking Away". It's like I was wearing jeans.

Turns out he swam at UVa, Nice guy, but I hate him.   

Nemo Brauch

HA! Chris, I know how you feel! I go to the YMCA in the morning and I'm surrounded by folks much older (as in 75+) looking much less fit (as in wider than tall), wearing baggie shorts or, dear God, a swimsuit with a skirt, who simply glide up and down the lane effortlessly making me look like I'm going backwards. When it comes to swimming, I NEVER underestimate someones abilities based on looks!

And yeah, I hate them too, just a little!

Kitboo

Really does goes to show that swim form can overcome even in increased profile in the water.
When I swam Masters in Seattle, there was a 1% body fat really fit looking doode in one lane. The adjacent lane was a young woman probably 3x his body mass index. She swam without perfect, effortless form and consistently lapped 6-pack abs doode. I vowed from that day on I would be more dedicated to doing those swim drills.

mgraffeo

The worst was the day that I was doing 100 yard repeats, and I looked up to see the former collegiate swimmer next to me passing me ever so slowly. 

I felt really good about myself, until I saw that he was holding a kickboard...

 

mancona

On the roads I am used to not being passed much at all, however in the pool it is a different story. I routinely get lapped by 6 year little girls, 80 year old men that use a cane to get into the pool, and the ex-college swimmer with a big beer gut and speedo that is too small flys by me like I'm sitting still. Like Mike the college swim has pasted me doing a kick set when I am sprinting 50s or 100s.

I just tell myself that the swim is only 2.4 out of 140.6 miles and I have 8+ hours to catch up :-)

Linda Patch

Swimming with pull buoy and paddles, and trying to book it...well, that's as fast as I can ever go. Doing said 'booking it," my master's coach's daughter (Div 1 swimmer) passed me like I was  grandma on Sunday morning in the lake doing the dolphin kick in underwater 25s!!! She did over and over again. I hate her too.

My boys regularly ask me how I can be so slow.

 

 

Steven Ford

I feel you pain hence my swimming nick name 'floating matress"

rah2774

LMAO!  Love it.  i won't bore you all with details about my experiences with nutjob fellow swimmers at the rec center and my new gym... more often than not, though, the folks (mostly men) who look the best in their speedos or tri shorts are not the ones who can swim. 

But I wanted to share a fellow DC tri clubber's self-created nickname, "the vertical swimmer"  his race reports are absolutely priceless and in one he requested anyone with a red wetsuit to donate it to him so he could wear it and pretend he was a buoy at his next race. 

mattsull

I see this all the time at masters. Someone will come out who looks terribly out of shape and very heavy. Haven't been in the pool for years sometimes. They will smoke me in the water. They are almost always former college/high school swimmers.

William Jenks

My kids swim. My 15 year old has such an advantage on me in the swim that he beat me twice last year (at age 14) in Olympic distance races...Grrr... In one race, Dude actually swam by me personally, yelled at me as he went by, and knocked me off my draft. Double Grrrr. I caught him and finished about a minute ahead, but with the wave start, he still had me by 3 minutes.... Grrrr Grrr Grrr.

Now, I'm afraid I have to start watching out for my 9 year old daughter in the pool - she'll probably get me for 100 this summer. Fortunately for my ego, her twin brother is still pretty uncoordinated, and I can still take him pretty easily. :-)

Coach Patrick

I think Shamu's cardiologist might not be so psyched about his girth and/or eating habits. I think you got him in the lane o' life, my friend.

cfletcher

I feel your pain. Let me share a quick story. I swam in high school and thought I was fairly fast. In law school, my then girlfriend/now wife, challenged me to a 3 mile open water race on Lake Lanier (1996 Olympic Rowing venue). She swam distance events for Emory, but I was always able to beat her in random 50 yard or 100 yard sprints. I was full of myself that I would smoke her, thinking that I was more fit, stronger, yaddah, yaddah. Needless to say, as I was finishing lap 2 of a 3 lap course, she's standing on the shore in a towel having just finished, asking me if I wanted to quit. I dropped an F bomb, finished my last lap, and could not drive home because my shoulders were so sore. She's never let me forget the drubbing or the fact that she had to drive home. Moral of the story, technique is more than half the battle in long distance swimming. Fortunately, she's my swimming coach!

Linda Patch

Posted By Clinton Fletcher on 26 Apr 2010 01:02 PM

I feel your pain. Let me share a quick story. I swam in high school and thought I was fairly fast. In law school, my then girlfriend/now wife, challenged me to a 3 mile open water race on Lake Lanier (1996 Olympic Rowing venue). She swam distance events for Emory, but I was always able to beat her in random 50 yard or 100 yard sprints. I was full of myself that I would smoke her, thinking that I was more fit, stronger, yaddah, yaddah. Needless to say, as I was finishing lap 2 of a 3 lap course, she's standing on the shore in a towel having just finished, asking me if I wanted to quit. I dropped an F bomb, finished my last lap, and could not drive home because my shoulders were so sore. She's never let me forget the drubbing or the fact that she had to drive home. Moral of the story, technique is more than half the battle in long distance swimming. Fortunately, she's my swimming coach!

 

Way to get schooled by a girl! And you handled it so well, complete with F-bomb and all. Awesome story.

Al Truscott

Posted By Linda Patch on 26 Apr 2010 02:23 PM

Way to get schooled by a girl! And you handled it so well, complete with F-bomb and all. Awesome story.

I'd say he handled it well enough. She married him!

tgarson

Nearly everything in this thread is the story of my life when it comes to swimming, I can't count how often this happens and correspondingly how often I am forced to proclaim "You see?!! This is why I hate swimming!".

With other triathletes it does not bother me as much because I know come race day or just training when we're out on the road they see that I'm not as awful at everything as I am swimming, but as for all those other people... perhaps this would explain why I seem to frequently show up to swim practice in my warmups wearing marathon or HIM race shirts to try and prove that fitness extends to dry land. Unfortunately I find that my efforts are in vain, as my friend, an ex-collegiate swimmer states, "Dude, I just don't do gravity sports".

Leigh Boyle

I love you guys.

Can totally relate. My sworn enemy at the Y is  "old spice man". Dude wears a wife beater and board shorts to swim and routinely mops the floor with me. Thanks to the wake he sends into my lane, I can taste his cologne (hence the name) for the rest of the day.

Coach Rich

You can all console yourselves in the fact that your nemisis spent 2-4hrs/day, 6x/wk, 11mo/yr from age 8 to 22 playing walltag and staring at a black line while you were out partying, watching cartoons, and otherwise enjoying your childhood. I was that kid, could barely hold my own in any sport requiring hand-eye coordination, but would smoke any fitness test .