I’ve tried Googling for this, and get competitive swimming results and pool ads.
It’s getting too dark to ride my bike to work, so I resumed lap swimming today. I think I did about a half mile, based on my known travel rate, but I’d like to know just how far 32 lengths in that pool really is…
50m
32 lengths is 50 metres?!? Jeez, those pools must look bigger on tv than they actually are. 
Yes, it’s 50m - although
If it was an Olympic-sized pool then it was just nine and a bit metres short of a whole mile (1 mile = 1609.34 metres).
Are you sure it wasn’t a 25-metre pool though? Fifty metre pools are fairly rare, in my experience.
There really isn’t any such thing as an “olympic” sized pool. Many places say that but it means nothing. This is especially true if you swim in an apartment building, they are just trying to make it sound big.
That being said, at the Olympics they swim in a 50 meter pool that is usually 25 meters wide. Most of the time if you swim in such a large pool it has a bulkhead that will divide it into two parts so more people can swim. Usually only in the summer are the pools made into a 50 meter lap pool. Somewhere on the pool deck there should be a sign that will tell you how many lengths are in a mile.
Since you didn’t say how long it took it would be hard to say how big the pool is, though if you are used to swimming in a 25 meter pool and you see a 50 meter pool it looks huge. I would say that most public pools and gym pools are 25 yards to 25 meters. The only real places to find 50 meter pools are at colleges, and then only the bigger ones, or in the place where swimming is big as in the Metro DC area or California.
Are you in No VA? I thought I saw a thread that said you were in VA. If that’s the case the only 50 meter pool I know of is at George Mason University, there may be others but that’s the only one I know of.
I disagree with this. As a child, I was on the local swim team, and we practiced and swam in a 50m pool. All of our weekly meets were held at different pools in the area, all of them 50m. I’d say in Johnson County, Kansas there are probably 15 50m pools. They’re certainly not uncommon or hard to find.
Hampton, SE VA. The pool is at a YMCA, and it is used for competitive swimming.
My rate is about a mile an hour, and I swam for a half hour. My shoulders and arms were sore in the locker room, too.
OK, as I understand it, Olympic swimming competitions come under the purview of FINA (“La Federation Internationale de Natation”). On their website, they have the rules for facilities that are to be used for FINA-sanctioned competitions. On this page, it says:
Then you have a lot of 50 meter pools in your area. I live in the DC area and am a competative swimmer and could probably only name 10 off the top of my head. Are you sure they were 50 meter pools? They are expensive to keep, you have to heat them, and I was unaware of many age group swimmers that swam often in a 50 meter pool. Even most college meets are done in yards on SCM.
Most YMCAs are yard pools, and 32 lengths would be 800 yards, almost the half mile. A mile would be 70 lengths. You should just be able to ask and they will know how large the pool is. I’m going to say the pool is a 25 yard pool.
By looking at it, I’d SWAG it at 150’ or so end to end, which would make it closer to 50m than 25.
When I asked the lifeguard the first day I went, the answer was “Olympic sized” (and the reason I’m asking )
50 m pool at uni. Advertises Olympic sized.
At my old town there was an (unheated) 100m * 25 m pool. I’m not sure what they advertised that as though.
Thanks for all the help. I looked up the Peninsula Y website, and found the answer. It is a 25 yard pool after all.
At least it makes the math easier.
I gave them a call and after being bounced around I finally got the answer: 25 yards. As I was saying, people can say what ever they want, a number of the pools in the apartments are called “olympic sized” around me, which I always found funny. Next time try asking how long the pool is and not how big, that’s how I asked them and they were confused they wanted to tell me how big it was.
Yep - from what you said, if you swam for half an hour you’d have been going at twice your usual rate, 2mph, if you did 32 lengths of a 50m pool. Not very likely.
Really? There are only 15 Olympic pools in the whole of England. (Cite). But then sports facilities in this country are pretty woeful. Unless you play snooker.
I was an age group swimmer and we had a swim meet every summer that was in a 50 meter “olympic size” pool in Rockville, MD. It was the county’s version of age group LC Championships. Entries were based on qualifying SCM times so opportunities to swim in that big pool were limited. However, I don’t remember ever going to a winter meet in a 50 meter pool as an age group swimmer.
I recently got a pitch from a local health club with a pool. I was told that the pool was “Olympic-sized.” I then asked how long, exactly, the pool was, and was told they’d have to get back to me.
In the course of this sales pitch, which went on for a few weeks, I asked several people how big the pool was. Each used the exact same term (“definitely Olympic-sized”), and none of them knew the exact length.
I finally just went in to look at the pool, and could tell immediatety that it was nothing like an Olympic-sized pool, and was in fact, completely inadequate as a lap pool at all for me. (I personally want a pool at least 25 yards long.)
I finally did get a number out of them–38 feet long. :rolleyes:
Yup, I’m sure. I lifeguarded there for a while as well. There was a 25m section of lanes that ran parallel about 1/2 way down the pool (so it looked like a very squat “T”). It was 8 lanes wide, but not 25m wide - not Olympic by the actual definition. But it was definitely 50m. Now, you must keep in mind that these are all outside pools - so no need to heat them, the Kansan summer sun did a decent enough job of that.
I think my estimate of 15 may be off. It’s been some time since I’ve lived in the area. Lessee:
Shawnee
-West (East is 25m)
Lenexa
-Indiana Trails
Overland Park
-Bluejacket
-Youngs
-Tomahawk (maybe)
Roeland Park
Mission
Merriam
Prarie Village
That’s 9 off the top of my head. I’m sure there are several over on the Missouri side, as well. Kansas loves their pools and movie theaters* big.
Last time I was home I counted over 100 screens within 10 miles of my mother’s house.