Hot Locker Room and Bad Backstrokes

I am still swimming. I haven't talked much about it of late, because I've plateaued at the number of laps and intensity. There was nothing new to report. Well, the new year brings new challenges. First, there is the heat in the locker room. I needn't have fretted about being cold on the rainy days before I dried off enough to dress. That locker room is so hot (most of the swimmers are elderly) that I am dry before I can walk from the shower to the lockers (maybe 20 feet). I am usually sweating before I can get my clothes off to put on my bathing suit. It's hot in there. The ladies still complain that it's cold. Wow.

The other news is the new swimmer in the pool. I had found variants in my head for all of the characters from my beloved swimming anime, Free! Eternal Summer save for one. The back stroke

swimmer, Makoto (He's the guy in the back in the swim jammers with the green trim in the photo above). Not that there isn't a back stroker. There is. I refer to him as NotMakoto. The sweet young man from that series would never swim horizontally across a crowded pool. It didn't get any better when he was glared into swimming the length of the pool. It's an open swim -- no lanes And there are elderly people bobbing all over the place in random patterns. But NotMakoto just does his own thing. He's hit one really good swimmer even though she tends to hug the wall. He's been such a challenge that they now have two lifeguards during that session. Why don't they say something to him? I don't know. The seniors seem to like to self police. I think something will be said soon.

Meanwhile, now that we've survived the colds and other unpleasantness, I'm hoping to do three sessions a week for a few weeks before I decide about moving from the open pool setting to the lande swimming later in the day. I still don't think I'm strong enough for that yet. But I have lost more weight during the holidays. I'm now at the point where I'm looking up videos to improve my form. So, things are moving along. So long as NotMakoto doesn't run into me, things will continue to go swimmingly.