33 Yard Pool
Posted by katymoe on July 1st, 2013I know it sounds super weird, but my new pool is a 33 yard pool. I don’t even try to do the math, I just swim the number of laps the coach says too. One set I tried to figure out how many yards I was swimming and gave up after 3 laps. I have to say I was a little hesitant about a 33 yard pool, I mean serious swimmers don’t swim in a 33 yard pool right??
One of my favorite things about my new pool is the lane assignments. You are either a Tortuga, a Dolphin, a Shark, an Orca, a Humpback, or an Otter! How cute is that?! I swam with the Sharks today and it was great, they were really nice girls. I’m still not exactly sure which of those animals is the fastest, I really thought the dolphins and the sharks would be the fast ones, what do I know.
I’ve learned that doing IMs in a 33 yard pool is really really hard….33 yards of fly on each go is A LOT harder than 25 yards. I do however like doing distance in this pool as it’s not as long as the 50 meter pools, but you still get to cut down on your flip turns.
I’ve been swimming with the Temescal Masters group now for a few months, more regularly in the past month, and I really love it. Everyone is super nice, there are many different coaches who coach the various workouts. It’s only $45 per month for daily 5:30am and 7pm swims plus various weekend swims. Nice! Last week my Wednesday night coach said she thought I was ready for the big move up to the Orca’s lane. I told her I thought I needed a couple more weeks with the Sharks.
The pool is only 2.5 miles from home so it’s an easy commute, that I keep planning to attempt the commute on my bike….but I usually sit at home for an extra 10 minutes instead.
I was dead set on figuring out the history on the 33 yd. pool, which as it turns out is actually 33 1/3 yards, just to make it more complicated. UGH. Back to my point – my brief research session I came up totally dry. I found out that:
A.) A random guy posted somewhere that many 33 yd. pools were made after the depression, but he didn’t know why.
B.) There are a handful of other ones out there ie: in Texas – and mostly people talk about how odd it is.
C.) Someone on some webpage wrote “33 yrd. pools are used for water polo” – I’m not a polo player, but you’d think I would have heard if this was a thing before now?
D.) There are a couple of other 33 yarders in the Bay Area — (which makes me even more curious – I may even have to take my research to another level – yep – past google!).
Sorry I don’t have pictures for this post– I AM collecting pictures from my training, as I’ve been meaning/planning/wanting to blog again for sometime now.
Yay! I’m back.
Oh, and I got married. 🙂 
