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Pool lanes. A rant. There is an undercurrent of lane politics at the lido that is worthy of a phd. As I have nothing better to do ( other than pour another rose ) let me try and outline the features of this this… minefield for BlueSky

Fundamentally the lane ratings are based on relative terms. What is ‘fast’? What is ‘very’ fast? What is slow or medium? It’s all relative. That’s problem one. Problem two. People.

There is a cohort of Lido user that believe that THEY are in possession of lane speed ‘truth’. They alone have the secret. For them, lane speeds are not relative. They are absolute. They themselves are a physical embodiment of lane speed. A universal constant of lido lore.

Problem three. Agents of lane speed chaos. I’ll give you two extremes. First the ‘slow’ woman ( and, sorry but yes - it’s always a woman ), hair above water, wearing shades, going VERY slowly in the ‘medium’ lane. She remains absolutely oblivious to everyone else sculling past her.

Next - dad bod Olympian (ALWAYS a man) He crawls ferociously for one length, barging & kicking past people for one length. Realising he can’t keep it up but has to save face on length two and keeps going. This he does (just about) by slowing to ‘medium’ to avoid an embolism.

This results in two things. 1. Lane speeds are a shit show. 2. The regulars are constantly annoyed about everything all the time and express this in the time honoured British fashion of side eyes, passive aggression and tutting.

Finally point. From a human psychology perspective no-one wants to be ‘medium’. So ‘fast’ is chock full of dawdling scullers and thrashing imbeciles. My personal approach is to go VERY early to avoid thrashers and be chaotic good by doing breast stroke in the ‘VERY fast’ lane. Yes! You heard me.