I swam at the Prospect Park YMCA

Never Done: Swam at the Prospect Park YMCA

You all know I'm in love with the Armory YMCA, right? Well, it's just 8 blocks away from another, older Y -- the Prospect Park YMCA -- which other people are equally in love with. Among other things, the PPY has a pool, a sauna, and a steam room. (I don't know if you've noticed, but it's fairly common for women's locker rooms to have dry heat, and men's to have steam, which has always seemed to me to be one of the great small injustices of American society.) Well, my Armory Y membership comes with 10 passes/year to the Prospect Park Y, and since I started my triathlon rotation training this week (Bike 2 times a week, Run 2 times a week, Swim 2 times a week, Rest one day) it only made sense to go try it out.

I figured the pre-work hours would be most crowded, so I went on a mid-day break, but it was pretty crowded, with 3-4 people in every little lane. The pool is teensy: 20 yards, three lanes (ostensibly Slow, Medium, and Fast, but really more like Stationary, Intermittent, and Moving Steadily.) Figuring it really was S, M, and F, I slipped into the middle lane, and started off. If I would just skip to the end of the story, which I sometimes like to do when I am reading, I would tell you that I swam 1/2 mile in 25 minutes and got out, took a shower, took a 5-minute steam, and by the time I got back to work, I'd been gone an hour and a half.

If I would tell you the long, slow version, I would tell you all about how warm and thoughtful the pool staff was, and how natural it felt to be back in the water (tshuve) and how I swam 1/4 mile, stretched, and swam another 1/4 mile without stopping -- after not having swum at all since some wonderful ocean swims last summer. I would tell you how, when I got out, the lifeguard called me over and whispered, "You should come between 7:15 and 8AM -- that's the best time." Also, I would tell you about the quality of thinking I do when I'm in the water -- something between letting go of all thought and in the process, coming to my deepest realizations. But most of all, I would tell you about how it felt to swim in a crowded lane, trying to approach it from a Mussar perspective. Just like in most of New York City, all the swimmers in the pool were trying to accomplish something in a paucity of space. To be more specific, we were trying to accomplish individual, personal goals in a small public space. Just like when driving, there are lane sharing conventions when swimming. If there are only two people in the lane, you can split the lane, and just stay on your own side. If there are three or more people, you circle, clockwise. The problem with circling in a 20-yard pool is that if the swimmers are going at significantly different paces, there's really no way to keep moving steadily. In a longer pool, you can touch the foot of the swimmer in front of you and pass them on the left. But in a crowded lane in a short pool, there's usually someone coming toward you, and preventing you from passing.

At first, when I got into the teeny Y pool, I longed for the pools I've known and loved -- 50 meter pools where I've had an entire lane to myself. Then I started thinking about how it would be possible to communicate with a lane full of wet New Yorkers, to try to optimize our collective swimming experience. I tend to rest at the end of each length and wait for the slower swimmers to get as far from me as possible before I start swimming again, so I can have as long a run as possible. Most other people I encounter tend to swim at their own pace, come up on the person in front of them, get frustrated, stop and tread water, or turn around in the middle of the lane and go the other way. I think the most optimal Mussar (balancing out the needs of self and others) thing to do would be for everyone in the lane to find a common pace, and keep it steady -- but that's hard for recreational swimmers to do. It's also hard for New Yorkers to talk to each other in the pool. I think this because I tried it, and the woman I spoke to looked at me blankly, didn't respond, and then ducked under water and kicked off.

Maybe I will eventually figure out how to organize my swim lanes to simultaneously take care of the needs of self and other, but maybe the answer (to swimming and living in New York) is that it's not ideal, but it's good enough. My swim wasn't uninterrupted, and I did get kicked in the head a couple times, but I did get to swim 1/2 mile on my lunch break. And it felt pretty great.