Tri en France: Swimming in a pool of doggy-paddlers

I haven't posted in SO long and I didn't realize QUITE how neglectful I was being. Oops.

The news of the month is that I started swimming again. In fact, I've gone TWICE this week! I know, who am I?

Here's the thing. Good things about swimming in France: 50m lanes which means (a) I'm doing more than I realize because it's METERS not YARDS and (b) 50m lengths so fewer walls. GREAT. Bad things about swimming in France:

The pool is not 25m wide, so that blows. Which means it's always set up long ways. Ok that's fine but means fewer lanes... always. Then it's divided very oddly with 3 empty lanes of swim space, a backstroke lane, a fast lane, and a lane where you can use odd equipment like... fins. Also, the "fast lane" and the "equipment lane" are frequently closed for school swim practice so now we're odwn to the free-for-all and the back stroke lane. Crap. About 18-25 people try to cram in this big lane at any given point in time, which may actually work if they all staggered their push-offs nicely but no. I would estimate that only 15% of them are doing any real sort of work out which additionally seem to conveniently consist largely of breaststroke repeats. AWESOME. Upon further inspection, I realized what I thought was breaststroke (because I saw heads bobbing in/out of the water) is frequently just a more elegant form of doggy-paddling. This "stroke" is favored by French women. SURPRISE. Apparently they swim like the run.

On Thursday, a pair of women - both in beach bikinis, decided their workout would consist of doggy-paddling a 50m every so often and then chilling on the wall to chat. One even had a waterproof MP3 player to help her get through her grueling occasional 50m drill. Then they managed to hang out on the wall exactly where I needed to push off for about 300m of my workout. Seriously? MERCI. VOUS ETES TROP GENTILLES. Needless to say, after pushing off, I frequently managed to surface a bit sooner than usual and give a nice dolphin kick in their general direction in hopes of splashing them as much as humanly possible.

On Monday I was blessed enough to get kicked in the face by one of the real breaststrokers. I forgive him - it's not his fault that these crazy French people set up their pools in the WORST WAY HUMANLY POSSIBLE. Also, in his defense, I think he stopped after realizing he walloped me with his foot. Being mildly accustomed to group-starts and being free-style karate chopped in murky lake water, I continued. I wasn't too perturbed until I felt it start stinging. Then when I got out of the water and realized "Wow, this actually really hurts. Wait..." and that I had a legitimate cut on my face I was truly agacé'd with this system.

wounded. lol

Ah well. At least I'm swimming and conveniently enough, once I got back in the water I loosened up a lot and my pace dropped significantly. I'm down to running a cool 9:15 pace mid-distance run (which for me is 4-6 miles) so that's super exciting. Looks like swimming really does help!

Morals:
French women don't too well swim either.
Swimming may truly help running.
Getting kicked in the face is not that fun, but a necessary evil.

Also - plug for triathlete lit. Brad got an email from this triathlete who is trying to market his new book, Sex, Lies and Triathlon. I started reading it and was thoroughly amused. I'm sure a review will follow once I finish it.