Women men and lane swimming

[Slimeblimeclimb]

I was talking with a colleague who also does pool lane swimming. We both noticed that when men come to a pool where all the lanes have someone in them and we need to stay doubling up they will typically choose a lane with a woman rather than a male. We both started independently choosing the lane with a man in them to give the women some more opportunity to swim alone. I was surprised that it was not just something I did or noticed and I was wondering if others did the same.

Judging by the men I have shared lanes with, a significant proportion are not chosing a lane with a woman in - they are choosing what appears to be an empty lane.

My experience is that men think they will be faster than the woman and like to "win" the lane. I usually speed up if I can and try to pass them.

DD finds this, she's a competitive swimmer though and grown men often strop off after she laps them a few times.

In my younger years I was a fast swimmer. I'd pick the most swaggering bloke on the poolside, pitch into his lane straight after he set off and annihilate him. Just because I could.

So true.

Lane swimming is hell, and the main reason I am now an all year round outdoor swimmer. Our pool only has three lanes (and an open area) - slow (heads up breaststroke), medium (fast breaststrokers, slow freestyle) and fast. Everyone in medium can be sharing perfectly nicely, and then some bloke will decide that the fast lane is too busy and get in medium - even though there are more people in it - and proceed to be a PITA. And then theres the one who does backstroke and hits/ scratches you.
Combined with the grimness of the changing rooms, I'm much happier in the lake which in the winter is a glorious world of women

I often share a lane with a man I know, last week he was telling me that another man who is nice as pie in the men's changing room, has recently started coming to lane swim and appears to deliberately choose a lane with a slower female swimmer and dominate it and her, doing massive performative butterfly taking up the lane etc. Now when lane hog guy turns up for lanes, my lane share buddy (not a fast swimmer, even I can pass him!) deliberately engineers getting into the same lane as him, so women don't have to. And lane hog guy behaves reasonably when sharing with a man, even a slower one. So yes, it's a thing

"my lane share buddy (not a fast swimmer, even I can pass him!) deliberately engineers getting into the same lane as him, so women don't have to. And lane hog guy behaves reasonably when sharing with a man, even a slower one. So yes, it's a thing"
Yay to your lane share buddy!

This. My particular favourite was overtaking men who were doing the crawl, while doing breaststroke.

The performative swimming of some men is ridiculous.

Love your lane share buddy

As my children would say - ‘what a legend’

Lane share buddy would be bemused - he's in his mid 60s and his worldview seems mostly to be from the 1970s, not a modern man by any stretch of the imagination! But also a father of three daughters. And a decent bloke

I have the opposite problem. Men are expected to be faster, so it's not such a big deal. But I'm quite fast and the men in my pool are older and also quite nice/decent. But me going faster "shows them up", (not that they say anything, they let me go first) so I'm basically doing it to them in a way...

My (council) pool only ever has the 3 Slow/Medium/Fast lanes. I use Medium and am always interested in the unspoken lane etiquette; if you are lapping everyone you need to move into Fast; if everyone is lapping you move into Slow. I would say 90% of those who don't observe this are male.

My other observation over many years is that it's only ever men (in Fast) who insist on doing butterfly; with all the associated huffing, puffing, splashing, crashing and tidal surges tsunamiing into the faces of swimmers in the next lane.

It took my brain a couple of reads to twig what this post means

Poster has nailed it !!!

Yes, I have also noticed this about lanes, though swimming front crawl I think puts some men off if they think they'll be slower than me. I got into a lane the other day with a man and a woman each going up and down one side of the lane rather than in a circle. When I asked the man if he was okay to swim round in a circle he refused because he didn't want to swim against the wall, so limiting the number of people in the lane to two. It's the outdoor 25m pool and there are no signs up saying which direction to go in, so it relies on general etiquette. The other lane looked too fast for me, and the free range bit was full as well. There's no lifeguard at that time of the morning, when I contacted staff to ask, they just said they relied on people doing the right thing but to let them know if there are any more problems. The thing is I feel too intimidated to ask again so he will just carry on swimming in his selfish way how he wants to, and I won't go at that time of the morning anymore.

I lane swim 3 times a week. Never noticed this. Swimmers join and share lanes depending on speed/ability. I really don’t care who I share with, as long as we’re all considerate and allows others to pass and turn.

I think I would have just started to do it anyway!

I was lane swimming at my local leisure centre once (in the middle lane!) when my swimming teacher turned up for a swim.

The unimpressed faces of the performatively splashy men in the fast lane were a picture as this unassuming lady in her sixties got herself into the fast lane.... until she left the lot of them for dust.

They collectively looked pretty sheepish after that. She's a legend. And an AMAZING swimmer.

I'm not a regular pool swimmer so I assumed that it was impolite to overtake.

I always just pick the slow lane and then go even slower if someone is ahead of me... have I been doing it wrong??

I wish this were a joke! made me laugh in a cynical way.

It’s not impolite to overtake if there’s room. I tend to be middle lane and if I feel that someone is catching me up then at one end I let them go ahead, generally takes them a few lengths to re-catch me.

It's not impolite to overtake if there is room.

Nothing I love more than overtaking the men who are having a mid life crisis and doing triathlon training in speed suits. They don't like it. I'm middle aged and fat but mostly faster than them.

If you're not (a) joining the wrong speed lane on purpose or (b) swimming literally over the top of them, you are not doing the same thing.

You join his lane, switching sides when head-to-head. It will irritate him but the 6 year old's rule applies, 'not touching, can't get mad'. If you can swim under him, even better, duck dive and pop up