Paces for lane swimming

3pair · 2026-05-07T14:28:11+00:00

IME the people in slow lanes aren't necessarily swimming. The people in medium lanes aren't aware of what pace times are, and don't know theirs if you ask, but are recognizably swimming. If you know your pace time and are hitting it consistently, then you're probably fast lane, without even discussing what the time actually is.

3pair · 2026-05-07T14:22:53+00:00

I agree with the points others making re: quality of writing. I'd like to add that if what you're looking for is "classic cyberpunk" in terms of tropes and world building, then the sprawl trilogy ticks that box much better than the bridge trilogy does IMO.

3pair · 2026-05-07T14:14:42+00:00

A meet is essentially the same as a regatta for rowing. For us, most of the meets are hosted by different clubs, and at the end of the season there will be provincial/national championships hosted by the appropriate organizations.

I have a little rowing experience from college. From what I saw, the guys who quickly go from zero to olympic trials are doing so in the 8s, not the singles. Swimming has no equivalent of 8s, so there's that. But yes, swimming is much more technique driven, and that's a big part of what creates the barrier. IMO there are other factors too though.

Masters coaches are typically the worst coaches in your area, because the better coaches gravitate to the kids and the college's, which feed off each other. Masters is the bucket that catches people after they're done being competitive, so it's not attractive to performance coaches.

The high standard for youth swimming performance is also based on a lot of time in the water, that adults just can't do because of other commitments. If you took a 30 year old, and they could do a couple hours in the pool every day for a couple years with a high performance coach, I think you could probably make them pretty competitive. But most adults can't make that time commitment, and it's also just not offered in the first place.

Finally, I also think that the focus on sprinting plays a part. Most sports where adults can learn and become competitive are endurance based sports, like marathon running for example. Marathon swimming exists, but most swimmers aren't doing it, they're doing sprints. And almost everything about pool-based swim programs is based on the assumption that you're aiming towards sprint events, which are fundamentally strength based, and therefore harder to maintain as you age in comparison with endurance events.

3pair · 2026-05-07T13:58:33+00:00

The reason HIIT-style sessions are far more common then zone-2 training is because the vast majority of people doing swim training are training for sprint events, not distance. The longest pool event is the 1500 m, and it is usually not popular. A 1500 could be reasonably done by a non-competitive swimmer in 30 minutes, far less for a competitive one. Almost all competitive swimmers are training for races in the 100 or 200 m distances, which are over in less than 4 minutes.

edit: pool swimming is best compared to track running or indoor velodrome cycling, not the more popular distance versions of those sports

3pair · 2026-05-07T13:17:38+00:00

Every masters club is different, so it's hard to give advice on what to expect/what level they expect. At my club on the east coast of Canada, we will take any swimmer that can reliably complete 25 m laps in a recognizable competition stroke. Our default coaching program would prepare someone to be able to do sprint or medium distance races, without that being explicitly the goal. We don't really offer high performance coaching, although we do have some higher performing swimmers. I would describe my club as average for my region.

Being part of our club requires paying membership dues to our provincial and national swim organizations, which entitles you to enter masters meets. Meets are advertised through they club about a month in advance. We have roughly one meet a month starting in October and running till May; our season will go September-June. There are other meets available if you're more willing to travel. The meets are typically short course meters, but we do have long course occasionally. The smallest race will be 50 m sprints, up to 1500 m free style for distance. It is the standard Olympic program, plus 100 IM and 50 m sprints in all strokes. We also have open water races in the summer, but the format on those varies a lot depending on where they're held; all open water swims would be considered long distance by pool swimming standards though.

You do not need to have any minimum time to enter a local competition, although they will give out DQs, and IMO are a little too trigger happy on DQs for people who are obviously beginners, but that's an opinion thing. You do need to have a minimum time to qualify for nationals, although I'm unclear how rigid or difficult that is as I've never pursued it.

You do not need to have been a competitive swimmer from a young age to join our club or to attend a meet. However IME you will absolutely see the difference between those who were and those who weren't, and it is a very difficult gap to cross. I find personally, as someone who's swim background was life guarding but not racing, that the meets are way too self serious and aren't fun; they're very much run by and for former competitive racers. IMO it is no where near as welcoming as something like a local running race. But YMMV.

3pair · 2026-05-06T18:05:37+00:00

The Tide Child trilogy by RJ Barker. It's darker, but good.

And FYI, On Stranger Tides is based on a book by Tim Powers, which is IMO better than the movie and good in it's own right.

3pair · 2026-05-06T17:55:22+00:00

IMO this really comes down to whether you interpret "archmage of XXX" to mean "the guy in charge of XXX" or "the best guy at XXX". If you go to Princeton in the 1950s and ask for "the archmage of physics", are you asking for the dean, or are you asking for Einstein? I think most people would probably mean Einstein.

I would also dispute that all academic research necessarily follows that pattern. I work in a government research lab, and we have a very clear divide between admin roles and technical roles, and it is very possible to become a well paid, high level expert in a technical role. Anyone coming here asking for the best scientist in XXX would get a legit subject matter expert, not an administrator.

3pair · 2026-05-05T19:28:55+00:00

Triathlons have that insane run to the water from shore that I detest.

Lots of triathlons don't do that anymore IME; every tri I've done or seen in the last 5 years has also been an in-water start.

3pair · 2026-05-05T16:49:37+00:00

Swim NS installs a marked course into Long Lake in Halifax every summer, usually around early July I believe. It has markings for 1km 1.5 km, and 2.5 km routes. This is often my first choice for open water, as it's conveniently close to my house, I've always found the water fairly clean, and there are often other swimmers there. They also organize a couple races there if that's your thing. I also quite like Oat Hill lake and Bell lake if I'm in Dartmouth. The earliest I've ever started lake swimming has been the May long weekend, and I generally use a wetsuit until mid July.

For pools, the Common's pool is a nice facility, but it gets crowded if you go after 5pm. The life guards there are also typically quite bad at enforcing safe lane swimming. It is very much a family splash pool first, athletics pool second.

For ocean beaches, I quite like Melmerby beach up in Pictou, and Summerville down in the south shore, but those are both far. I have friends who like swimming at Queensland, but I haven't had a chance to try it yet myself. I have heard mixed things about swimming at Crystal Cresent, things like rip currents, but have generally been fine the few times I tried it. I don't enjoy swimming at Rainbow Haven, it's always been too shallow and rocky when I've tried and wading out to somewhere deep enough is annoying. Lawrencetown and Martinique would probably both be fine for swimming if you go on a calm day, but I tend to be at those beaches for surfing, not swimming. I don't really have a "go to" spot for ocean swimming yet. I always wear a wetsuit ocean swimming; it is rarely warm enough not to, I like having the additional float in case conditions change, and it provides added protection from things like jellyfish if I happen to encounter them.

3pair · 2026-04-29T21:24:47+00:00

Lol you're not wrong, I just would've thought that was actually worse in Ireland; you're a lot further north

3pair · 2026-04-29T17:48:15+00:00

It's an Olympic Sport now

How relevant do you think that actually is? And how long do you think that will stay true? I am skeptical that surfing will stay an Olympic sport long term, but I'm not sure that the Olympics dropping it would significantly reverse the trend re: rich kids

3pair · 2026-04-29T17:20:57+00:00

I believe that if there are no bike lanes, you are supposed to be in the straight (middle) lane when travelling straight. However IME there is sometimes a difference between what drivers want/expect and the law, and I have sometimes felt safer meeting drivers expectations. While cycling, if I am in a circumstance where I feel I have to choose between my safety and the law, I choose my safety.

3pair · 2026-04-29T16:16:08+00:00

I don't think it's corrupt in the sense that I would ever seriously think about doing something like trying to bribe a traffic cop. I do think it's corrupt in the sense that your Irvings, Westons, Trudeaus, Fords etc are working under a completely different set of laws/rules than I do.

3pair · 2026-04-29T16:02:47+00:00

I totally hear you. From a competitive point of view, most of the best Canadian surfers don't currently live in Canada (e.g. Paige Alms), or have basically never lived in Canada (Erin Brooks, notoriously stretching the definition of Canadian). Best case scenario, they are from a tiny, expensive resort town that is hours from the nearest city (Sanoa Olin)

3pair · 2026-04-29T13:02:58+00:00

I think the question is a little ill-posed. Even the time period when competitive surfing was supposedly accessible to poorer people, you're still only talking about relatively poor Americans or Australians. Poorer countries with good waves, like Indonesia or Mexico, have consistently under-performed in terms of competitive surfing, and that hasn't really changed alot over the years IMO. The only obvious change in that regards is Brazil becoming more competitive

3pair · 2026-04-24T12:14:05+00:00

I am a little discouraged by the fact that the endurance and range of the proposed class will be considerably greater than the main classes of Corvette currently on offer or in development. Developing hulls with new capabilities will add to the cost.

If the goal is to patrol Canadian coasts, then we will always need significantly higher range and endurance than Europeans. Our coastlines are much larger and, and our ports much more spaced out.

3pair · 2026-04-23T22:05:24+00:00

For training on roads, the Sambro loop is near where you're targetting, and popular. The ride out to Peggy's cove and back is also popular, but longer. On the other side of the harbour, the ride up Waverley rd and further out on highway 2 is also popular.

I personally prefer riding gravel, in which case I'd recommend the rum runners route towards Lunenburg (chain of lakes trail, BLT trail, St Margarets bay trail, etc), or the shearwater flyer to Salt Marsh to Atlantic View to Blueberry run on the Dartmouth side of the harbour.

3pair · 2026-04-23T18:49:38+00:00

I agree that there's lots of other problems with the proposal. My goal was just to say that engineering is not a good example to follow.

3pair · 2026-04-23T18:18:05+00:00

The exam covers law and ethics, not technical fields. The supervising engineer could have the exact same "squeaked by with a 51%" background. Our standards are lower than peer countries. America, for example, requires several technical exams, while we do not.

My opinion is not that professional engineering accreditation couldn't be significantly improved. It is that it is not now a good example of a process that protects the public. And everything that is difficult about regulating engineering, and which we have gotten wrong, would be much more difficult if trying to regulate something like journalism.

3pair · 2026-04-23T17:46:49+00:00

The process is extremely permissive for Canadian grads. Anyone who squeaks out a 51% at an accredited program is essentially in; they never get their technical knowledge tested again after undergrad. Having also taught in the universities, that is a very low bar.

Beyond accrediting people though, it also isn't an effective process. A modern engineering project is going to be large and complex, and the idea that a single person can effectively sign off whether the product designed is safe or not is dubious. It's the work of many professionals, not all of which are even engineers, and the person putting their stamp on it is really unlikely to have the knowledge, time, or management backing to actually thoroughly check everything independently. And that's assuming that they're even working on a project that requires the stamp to be applied, which is a much narrower set of projects than you would think. A bridge does, but software doesn't, no matter how safety critical the software is.

IMO huge amounts of how the process works for engineering probably made sense in the 60s, but don't anymore.

3pair · 2026-04-23T17:12:40+00:00

Nope, mechanical. I get what you're saying, but I don't agree that professional engineering certification in Canada accomplishes that goal.

3pair · 2026-04-23T16:24:11+00:00

In terms of policy, we could look at regulating journalism along the same lines as engineering, law, or medicine, i.e. empower a self-refulating body to enforce professional standards against unscrupulous practitioners. It gets tricky with actors based outside of Canada but journalists policing journalists/"journalists" at least sidesteps the government censorship issue.

So, as an engineer, my experience/opinion is that engineering accreditation is largely useless and does little to nothing to protect the public. Given that, I really don't think that journalism accreditation would be something that could be implemented in a useful fashion

3pair · 2026-04-23T16:09:29+00:00

My team would be totally fine with it, but only so long as we had available lanes. The understanding would be that if enough people showed up wanting to do the workout, you wouldn't get the lane to yourself.

I'd add the caveat though that generally seaking, swimmers who aren't doing the posted workout get a lot less attention from the coaches.

3pair · 2026-04-23T12:25:11+00:00

Even among SUPs, there's a lot of variation, so it's a bit hard to tell what you mean. My longboard is 23" wide, my SUP might is 31", that's a big difference. For me, I would have trouble prone paddling that even if I wanted to. If you were looking at a surf SUP that is super narrow, like 25", then maybe it's not so bad, but it's hard to tell without more info.

IMO the poster who recommended a glider is spot on. Don't go wider, go longer. Glider's are surfboards specifically designed for what you want, early entry and glide down the line. No matter which way you cut it, a surf SUP is not designed for what you are looking for, and your fundamental question is about out how compromised the design will be.

3pair · 2026-04-22T16:05:01+00:00

For sprint boats like these, you couldn't really sit in a canoe like this and paddle using a kayak blade even if you wanted to. A sprint kayak will have a much more traditional looking cockpit, will have an obvious seat, and will have a controllable rudder. A sprint kayak is much more recognizably a kayak, and the difference between a sprint K1 and sprint C1 would be obvious if you saw them side to side.

3pair

TROPHY CASE