Favorite Person At The Gym: The Snorkeler

I am supposed to swim at least two times a week, according to my triathlon training schedule. I am lucky if I get in one session in the pool a week. Making the trek to the indoor pool at the gym in Austin is not always the top of my priority list since all the other swimmers in town also think they are too good to swim outdoors when it is 30 degrees outside. These other swimmers include The Snorkeler.

Before she was The Snorkeler, the person I am referring to is a nice, older woman who asked to circle swim in my lane (Circle swim is where you go up on one side of the lane and come back on the other so you can fit more than two people in a lane.) Circle swimming works well when everyone is more or less at the same pace, so no one has to constantly pass each other or wait for the slowest swimmer (me) to finish.

Because I am apparently judgmental, I assume she will be slow based on her apparent age and fitness level and therefore right up my alley (or lane), so I said yes. Little do I know that she had a snorkel and mask in her bag that transformed her into a swimming super villain, known as The Snorkeler, who will chase me down no matter how fast or slow I dog paddle up and down the lane. If I wait for her to go ahead of me and start immediately after her, by the time I reach the end of the lane she is somehow behind me again, slapping the water at my feet never looking up to see that someone might be in her way, or maybe she just didn't care. I would tell her to go ahead, except the mask allowed her to never lift her head, nor stop because she could actually now breath underwater. Unlike the rest of us who have to turn our heads to the side every stroke or so to gulp in enough air to keep going another few yards.

Frankly, I think using the snorkel while swimming laps is cheating. It's like having a motor on your bicycle or those fancy shoes with wheels embedded in the heels that are so popular with the tweens.  Don't get me wrong, I love to snorkel and have my very own mask, breathing apparatus and flippers that I use in the ocean and rivers so see all the pretty fish and cool marine life. They are for leisurely activities, not workouts at the gym. The Snorkeler didn't have flippers on, but I didn't check the size of her feet to see if they counted (mine are totally flippers, by the way). The snorkel meant she never had to break that nice forward momentum to turn her head and was taking in more oxygen than those of us who had to hold our breath while our faces were in the water. Cheater. Next time I see her in the pool, I'm totally going to do a cannon ball and splash all of her stuff, then promptly get out and sit in the sauna until she is done.