Because some people swim MUCH faster than others. It takes a bit of skill to pass another swimmer (which I lack, so I don’t like passing slower swimmers), and it’s just all around annoying to keep catching up to a person on each lap and/or always have your feet grabbed at because someone keeps catching up to you.
It’s better for everyone if you’re all swimming around the same speed. You avoid traffic jams.
Oh, because of the wake? I don’t remember it being a problem, but I haven’t swum laps since high school. And it was an all-female class of non-competitive swimmers.
Because some people are just really really fast. It’s a royal pain to catch up to someone a few times when they haven’t even finished one lap and gives everyone in the lane a bad workout. Most faster swimmers have a workout they want to do, and times they want to do. If someone is just swimming non stop then that person gets in their way and the faster one gets in the other person’s way. Plus it can be somewhat dangerous, I’ve run in to people a number of times because people just go whenever. I don’t like running into people and I’m sure they don’t like e running in to them.
It is a bit like a highway, where if someone is driving really slow in the fast lane they screw up everything else. It’s rude for a slow person to get in the faster lane, just as it’s rude for the faster person to get in the slower lane.
Timid swimmers are often too intimidated by fast swimmers, not only because of the wake, but because they’re unnerved by someone zooming by so close. So the timid swimmer will often bail out on swimming, so they don’t get to enjoy the pool. On the other hand, limiting fast swimmers to the rate of the slowpokes makes their workout useless.
Also, fast swimmers do not stop quickly. If you hop in front of a fast swimmer without warning, you’re going to get plowed into and over. This hurts – both the plower and plowee.
Ultimately, though, its the fast swimmers who usually have the expertise to share a lane with swimmers of different speeds, so if the lanes aren’t segregated, they’ll be super-frustrated, but will get their workout in. The slower swimers with less experience tend to just give up, and leave. That’s the worst thing about the Y that I belong to – every year they oversell their membership drive so they don’t have enough lanes for all the new swimmers they lured in. Every year the slow newbies last only a few weeks and then we never see them again. I suppose it supports lower membership rates for me, but still kind of a crappy way to do things, IMO.
Whoa, people are forced to share lanes? Who would do that? That sounds grossly unetiquettal.
Yes. 
There are usually two to four people in my lane. That’s why you have slow, medium and fast lanes. When you get to the pool, you assess how fast each lane is swimming and choose the one who’s speed you most closely match. As long as you are all going about the same speed, you’re fine.
I mean, the pool we go too has six lanes (two each of slow, medium and fast). There are always going to be more than six swimmers.
The pool I go to has 3 lanes druring open swim. That’s 1/2 the pool. The other half is for duffers, like me, who swim a length then paddle around talking to the other old ladies before class.
Deep water class uses the entire deep end, while a kiddie class goes on in the shallow end.
My husband’s gym has only a lap pool with 4 lanes. He swims 20-30 laps a day. He’s a very fast swimmer. He was a championship swimmer in high school and college. He’s also a big guy so he has to dive under slower people in his lane. Since the pool is only 4 feet deep, I know when it’s been crowded by the scrapes on his tummy.
I’ve been told to take up swimming because it would help my knees heal quicker (I slipped and fell back in March and landed on both kneecaps. I’m due to return to work in July because I literally cannot stand for more than a half hour at a time).
The closest pool is the Y. I went online to find out the cost of joining our local Masters class :eek: It may not be much to some people, but it is for me.
It’s just getting warm enough here to bike. My husband has a mountain bike he hasn’t used in eons. If I can figure out how to lower the seat, maybe I’ll give it a spin.
But yeah, swimming…I’ve always been a water baby. When I was a kid I could stay in a body of water 24/7. I probably still can.
We share lanes at our Y, too. But as I said, they are very nice people and usually we just accomodate each other, and our schedules usually overlap enough where we can make do.