Last night I was cranking out some incredibly fast laps for a beginner and my mind wandered a bit.
Why are swimming pools designed so that one swims back and forth, having to do a flip turn (which i have yet to do correctly) or stop and turn around and swim in the other direction? Runners don't work out on a track where they run down then stop, kick off a wall and turn 180 degrees and run back where they came from. Right?
The goal is to keep it about actual swimming.
A flip turn is an artificial action dictated by swimming pool design. For that matter, so is the diving start.
Design #1 The Swimming pool track.
Swimming pools should be designed like running tracks with two parallel straights with two arcs connecting them and lanes in concentric fashion. The starting lanes would be in staggered fashion. The finish would be determined by an overhead camera. Need to resolve how to keep concentric lane lines in place. Maybe actual walls built to separate each lane.
Design #2 The Endless Swimming pool lap.
Ok this design would be a combination of an "endless" pool and an olympic pool. A current is generated so swimmers swim mostly in place with some room for swimmers that lag behind. The winner is the person that is ahead when the time elapses. The current could be kept constant during the race or actually get more forceful as more time elapses.
There. Keeping swimming as pure as possible in an artificial environment. Maybe I will feel differently when I learn the flip turn.
Design #3 The Steeplechase.
Ok I was about to end this post when I thought: how about a steeplechase design? A swimming obstacle course in which competitors have to swim on the surface and underwater through and over various barriers. This would be fun!
