II have sort of given up on outdoor open water swims and started doing them in the outdoor 50 meter pools around the city. It takes a hell of a lot of effort and logistics to swim in general, let alone at Ohio beach.
I need to keep up my swim fitness and understand ows is harder than a pool but I'm never affectively swimming out there. I bought a month lap pass and have tried out a few "new" 50m pools (new to me!). Jean from TCS doesn't live too far from me and emailed me all the pools and schedules on the north side.
I decided to hit up Portage Park pool as it was on my way back from Arlington Race Track where we had out company outing that afternoon.
They gave me a hard time that unwanted to swim (at all, really) laps during family swim. I wasn't allowed to swim in the lap lanes (ok, fine) but they all but said I needed to be there with a kid to swim. I was like, "so I can't swim if I have a kid and left them at home?" I was so confused at first because I thought they were telling me out of concern for me and I was like, " oh it's no problem, I'll just swim around people" (thinking I'd get some IM practice that way anyway!) but then became annoyed when I realized that they didn't want to let me swim. They also do not allow bags of any kind in the pool deck and caution you to not leave anything locked in the lockers of value. You tell me what you're supposed to do- that was ridiculous. After I walked back to my car and left everything inside that, I just walked in and started swimming. If they wanted to arrest me for swimming during open swim, then I figured I'd let them!
Eventually, family swim stopped (& by the way, there were at least two creepy dudes swimming around without kids during family swim!) and they made us all get out and sit outside the fenced pool area for 15 minutes until lap swim started. Ultimately, I swam almost 2 miles of laps and then left. I don't think I'll be back there to swim laps but maybe to go off the high dives!!
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