To never attend a mixed swimming session again?

[Iphigeniaa]

Went to a ladies only lane swim session. Mostly 55+ but a few in their 30s like me.

It was amazing.

Everyone was polite, made room for each other, stuck to appropriate speed lanes, said hello but we mostly politely ignored each other in the sauna/steam room.

No loud men trying to chat to you or over-taking.

Absolute fucking bliss.

Surprised ladies only is even allowed nowadays!!

Why is that a problem? I tend to swim sets of 10 lengths fairly fast, then rest, because that’s what I want to do. There will be others who then swim past me, but so what?

YANBU at all OP. Women only spaces are brilliant and long they may continue.

If you prefer it, why would you not?

It’s not my experience though. I avoid the women only sessions at my local pool because of the multiple women swimming slowly next to each other and taking up full lanes.

I'm not a bloke but I do this. It's how swimmers train to get faster. Anyone can bumble up and down half heartedly for an hour, without even raising their heart rate, but if you want to get fitter and faster, you have to increase effort, swim faster and raise your heart level which will result in you being tired or out of breath when you stop.

What if the overtaker is already in the fastest lane? They can't change lane. It's the slower swimmer who is in the wrong lane and needs to move. Should the faster swimmer just patiently sit behind them, swimming at a much slower pace?? No- they should overtake and maybe the slower swimmer will realise they need to move.

Sadly the most aggressive swimmer where I used to swim regularly was female

Overtaking is horrible when you're not a strong swimmer yourself. And I absolutely HATE people (men, actually, it's always men) touching and at times grabbing me by my foot and tugging to tell me they're going to charge past, kick gallons of water into my face and generally make it clear that a shit swimmer has no place in the slow section when they've got 59 lengths to do in the next 12 minutes and don't want to use the lanes.

I didn't even know that it's supposed to be OK to touch somebody to tell them to get the fuck out of your way until I read it on MN one day.

I'm never going to improve when that stuff is going on.

Couldn't possibly be! All women are just perfect! It's always men in the way!

*wrong not eat!

FFS wrong not way!!!

@NeverDropYourMooncup I don't know what pool you've been going to !!!!!!! but that sounds horrendous

Any of the four local authority pools in the area.

It wasn't like that in a private gym I used to belong to, but with it being only a 12x8m pool and good timing, I managed to get it to myself a lot of the time. When I didn't or it wasn't the single hour a week of Female Only swimming on a Sunday evening, that one usually had assorted men run-bombing and diving headfirst - over anybody in the water - into a pool that was, IIRC, 1.8m at the deep end. Did get the occasional 'I think I'm a Triathlete' in there, but once they'd realised it was possible to reach the other end with one inevitably splashy pushoff, they tended to not bother a second time. They're probably the ones at the council pool now.

It's what puts me off changing my current gym membership to a place that has a proper sized pool; I'm not good enough to be able to use it when there are 'It's perfectly normal to overtake and crap swimmers shouldn't get in our way' people likely to be there.

I swim a lot, used to do so competitively, and have experienced asshats of both sexes in public lanes. However, the most vicious by far were 2 local women who took against me for wanting to follow the lane order, because they wanted to swim side by side. In the lane. It was a very quiet but obviously that was not possible. One of them actually followed me from the changing rooms in such a rage that she began being abusive towards me right in front of the reception desk and the manager and, as a result, was banned from the entire local authority's pools for a period.

The other thing about swimming is that some people assume they are better than they are because they can swim non stop for a lengthy period of time, when in reality they are quite slow, and others assume they are better than they are because they can swim one fast length every 5 minutes.

In general, public pools and pool changing rooms attract more than their fair share of odd people who do odd things for different reasons.

Being older and swimming slowly isn't being a nusiance!

Women only sessions sound lovely, in theory.

Men are generally lovely.

It's great that you enjoy women only sessions but my 58 years on this planet have shown me that women can be so much nastier than men.

You can tell the difference between someone training, and someone being a prick, though.

It's not uncommon to see men (it's always middle aged men) happily trundling away, slowly up and down, then the second a woman gets in who's faster than them they suddenly put on a burst of speed that leaves them practically having a heart attack. If the woman gets out they go back to slowly trundling along.

It's clearly not someone doing it as part of a training regime.

I do prefer women only sessions but my local pool has their women only session in the main pool which starts just as the women-only aqua aerobics session is finishing in the small pool, and loads of the women from aqua aerobics sneak into the main pool without having booked (meaning it's way over capacity), and there's a group of them who just stand/float there doing aqua aerobics by themselves in the middle of what's supposed to be lane swimming, then get outraged if you swim by them. Drives me crazy!

Sorry but if you’re being regularly overtaken you need to move down a lane.

Never will I understand people who complain about getting splashed in lanes sessions. You're in a pool. You'll get wet !!

I don't have all these other resentment problems.

I think I can guess the answer, but what lane do you move to when you're already either a. In the slow one or b. Not in the lane section but the side that is for non lane swimmers/people who can't swim an entire length easily?

Hence why I said one of them needs to move. I swim in the medium lane and there are plenty of people who over estimate how quickly they can swim but don't move lanes 🙄 Not helped by the fact that the lifeguards do nothing to enforce the lane swimming rules...

The swimming pool I go to, the fast lane is the only lane not full of people doing extremely slow breaststroke. Most people in the fast lane do a reasonably speedy crawl, with just one or two professional competitive swimmers (complete with coaches yelling from the sidelines) going super fast and overtaking everyone. I don't know what the solution is.

Never will I understand people who complain about getting splashed in lanes sessions. You're in a pool. You'll get wet !!

There's a big difference between the normal splashing 99% of swimmers cause, and the odd random dickhead doing extremely aggressive butterfly sending giant waves crashing over your head. I swim twice a week and very rarely get splashed, so it's noticeable when it does happen. And yes it's obnoxious.

I don't mind butterflyers as long as I have room. Why moan about being splashed if problem is actually person being too close & no room to do your thing?

My typical experience of Too close = getting scratched & kicked by breaststrokers ... possibly in another lane !

No room = very wide breaststroker or (probably breast-stroker again) another swimmer in centre of our lane not letting faster ppl by so tailback builds up. Narrowing the lane at end, so not letting fast ones pass. I'm usually not faster, btw

I've been swimming lanes for most of 30 years. In different countries. No one has tugged my ankles ever.

You go with it if it suits you, but by far the most annoying swimmers are pairs of women who've gone for a pootle and a chat.