No Swim(s), Crappy Swim, Awkward Swim

No Swim
The last post I made was the last time I swam. If I remember correctly, that means it was Monday, November 17th. I had planned to swim the following Wednesday and then early Friday morning before my flight. I had a feeling the Friday swim would get cut from the line-up b/c of having to take care of last minute packing & chores before skipping town for the next 10 days, but I was kinda disappointed that I also had to drop Wednesday from the schedule.

Given that I still can't run or bike at all due to the lingering knee thing, there is a lot of endurance frustration that builds up and swimming is its only release. No swimming = frustration! Rarrrrr!!!

Crappy Swim
Anyway, I brought my swimming things with me to MI in hopes of sneaking into one of the many pools at U of M or somewhere else in Ann Arbor. I successfully used the photoshop skills I acquired while at the school to forge a fake schedule which would now gain me access to the school's pool system. While, in many ways one might consider that to be a victory, the pool I decided to go to was reaaaaaaaally awful.

Even the photo of the pool turned out ugly. 

I should've thought a little harder about picking the pool they built in the center of the engineering school's campus. I mean, no disrespect to engineers, but c'mon... you're definitely not known as an athletic bunch, and apparently the university took that into account when deciding what kind of a pool would best suit your needs. They supposedly gave them 20 yards to swim, but I wouldn't doubt if they cheated them even on THAT distance.

The speed is referring to how quickly you can push off the wall, because the pool is obviously waaay too short for this to mean how fast you can actually swim across it.

I don't recall ever swimming in a 20yd. pool before, but let me tell you that even someone like me who is baaaaaarely talented enough to fall into a rhythm, was feeling the frustration of pushing off the wall so many times with so little actual swimming in between. I showed up to the gym on Monday (11/23) at 9:30pm and was in the water around 9:40pm. Unbeknownst to me, the pool closed at 10pm so I was only able to get about 1800m in.

The next day, my legs were sore.

Awkward Swim
My friend Bryan, aka top-5 swimmer in the state of Michigan, was in town for the holiday so him and I went out in search of a better pool than what I had found two days prior. I put my photoshop skills to work and doctored him up a fake schedule so we could try the "I lost my school ID but have this copy of my schedule" trick for getting into the university gyms. Our first stop was the Canham Natatorium, also known as the U of M swim-teams' competition pool. It was AWESOME. However, instead of sneakily jumping into the near-side pool and taking the chance people would mistake our use of jammers for some sort of affiliation with the swim program, we decided to approach the coach see if honesty would win us some time in the water. It didn't.

Canham Natatorium

Our next stop was the IM Building right next door. This is the oldest workout facility on campus, but originally the only one, so our expectations were for a decently-sized pool because they most-likely would have used it for all varsity and non-varsity swimming matters. Our visit was a short one, however, since it was closed already for the day.

The Intramural Sports Building at The University of Michigan.

The next pool on our list was ultimately the one I had the highest hopes for us getting into. There are multiple entrances so there would be no eyebrows raised over two guys both conveniently forgetting their IDs, forgetting their student ID numbers and printing out schedules from the architecture school. I went to the back door and was able to successfully talk my way into the facilities. I then walked quickly to the front doors just in time to see my friend getting turned away. FAIL.

We were down to two pools - the north campus recreation building (that AWFUL pool I swam at on the engineering campus) and this obscure public facility I had never heard of before. We chose the latter since there was no way in hell I wanted to swim at the NCRB pool again, even if we both could get in. So it was onto the pool of the unknown...

We show up to the Mack Pool and aren't sure if we're about to walk into an elementary school or a warehouse. It was kind of sketchy.

 The Mack(Daddy?) Pool

The website said that we'd each have to pay $4 to get in, but I wan't sure if we had to show proof of Ann Arbor residence, which neither of us were equipped with and I was unwilling to forge. We got inside and were stuffed by the site of lights being off and the help desk window locked securely. We checked the men's locker room door, but that was locked. Bummer! On a whim, we walked to the other side and checked the women's locker room door...

Ta-da!!

We were greeted with an open door AND lights-on! Again, we were still under the impression that this place could somehow be a middle-school so we resisted running into the girls locker room swinging towels around and hollering "boobies!!!!" We DID, however knock and yell in our most mannish voices that we were indeed dudes and were entering the women's locker room.

We made it all the way through without seeing any signs of life or use. However, the door to the pool was propped open so were sure that we had stumbled upon something. We both walked through the door expecting to see a woman doing laps, but were greeted with something very much unexpected...

BAM! (queue the music) Just as we walked out onto the pool deck, a whole girl's synchronized swim-team dove into the water to the music from NFL on Fox. AWESOME.

 

You can't imagine how creepy I felt when taking this photo.

Then the music stopped.

"Uhh, who are you?"

Heh, who were we?... you mean the two dudes that just walked out of the girl's locker room?

We quickly and sheepishly rushed over to the only woman not wearing a bathing suit, assuming she was the coach, apologized for interrupting their practice and politely asked if we could occupy one of their unused lanes. In the time between my question and her answer (yes), I looked around and had no idea how old these women/girls were standing around us... AWKWARD!

To clarify, they definitely were not elementary or middle-schoolers, but beyond that I had no idea how old they were or if I was about to be arrested for stripping down to my jammer and jumping into the pool with them. Needless to say, in my mind, from that point none of those girls had anything but necks and heads, and the men's locker room was locked because that's where the cops were hiding.

But like I said, they told us we could swim next to them so long as we promised to not sue them if one of us drowned. Fair enough.

We got a fairly good workout in (2400m). It was a 25yd. pool, I believe, so were able to stretch our arms out a bit, but still nothing like the 50m goodness I am used to at the pool I go to back in DC. For the record, Bryan whipped my ass, or at least knew he could and only happened to beat me by about a body-length for each of our two 1000m sets. He was breathing a lot harder than I was but I'm pretty sure he had a lot more (speed-wise) in the tank if he wanted to use it. It was cool to be swimming in the presence of "talent" and made me wish we lived a lot closer than DC is to Boston.