The last days of outdoor swimming

The last week has been a sad week as the outdoor pool winds down to close for the season.  Every year we have to beg and plead for the city to keep the pool open for lap swimming after school starts up in mid-August.  Many of the lifeguards are high school and college kids so once they return to school there aren't many guards available to work.  One thing that we can usually negotiate is swim time when the school PE classes are at the pool. 

It's pretty funny to share the pool with the gym classes.  One of the first days that we arrived we found out that the pool was having a chlorine problem and we could only swim in the diving well.  Luckily that day we swam in between classes otherwise it wouldn't have worked.   The diving well is a very odd length and contains no lap lanes or lines.  We had a group of 7 in the well and I managed to swim into people a couple times.  We did a lot of different types of intervals since we were working in such an odd pool.  Sadly, that day the guard had to help out 2 kids within one minute of each other in one of the gym classes.  I think it is so important that kids learn how to swim...these are jr high aged kids that don't know how to swim.  That just seems crazy to me.

I took a few days to swim indoors because the locker room with all the jr high kids is a little hectic.  As the week was winding down, I realized that Thursday was going to be one of the last chances to swim outdoor lunch laps.  I met up with the crew and we had a great final workout.  We did 300yd sets so 3 x 100 yds, 4 x 75 yds, 6 x 50 yds, and 12 x 25 yds.  Each set was different but totaled up to 300 yds.  It is a fun way to get some distance in and have the workout go by quickly. 

I got out of the pool just as a class was getting there.  Luckily most of the class had already exited the locker room so it wasn't too crazy.  I really won't miss the bare bones locker rooms at our outdoor pool! 

Obviously designed by a male since there are no outlets by the mirrors!

Stuff everywhere! Not a normal sight just what it looks like during gym class.

This last picture made me remember back when I was in high school and had to take swimming class.  I grew up in West Des Moines, Iowa which is right at the intersection of I-80 and I-35.  Our pool had a separate locker room that was located right next to an exterior door to one of the parking lots.  As you can see from the pic, the school is right off an interchange on the highway. 

Good ole Valley High School...bet you didn't know I'm a Valley Girl!

 

Our gym teacher would always tell us a story to encourage us to properly lock up our clothes and things in the locker room.  He would remind us that our school was just a quick detour off the highway and that the gangs of Chicago knew what a gold mine of stuff there was in our locker room.  So you had better lock up your stuff or else it would disappear to the Interstate travelling gangs of Chicago.  Don't forget that it was a several hours drive to Chicago! Either way I can't remember how many times I heard this story but it was told every quarter before any swim rotation in gym class and usually multiple times in a quarter.  I thought of this story as I got ready surrounded by the mess of the jr high girls' things. 

This year I got in a lot more outdoor swim workouts than ever before.  It was so easy to drive across the street with my new job location compared to last year and I took advantage of that and got lots of lunch time laps in with the Arkansas Masters Swimming crew.  It will be sad to see everyone return to their respective pools since some of the crew are people I only get to swim with during the summer.  Until next year!!!