Flashes of Panic

Now, having said I answer questions, I need to answer Julie’s question about pool running.

Pool running is, well, it’s running in a pool. There’s a pretty good explanation (and a photo!) in this article:

For the uninitiated, pool running is simply running in the deep end of a swimming pool. No, not across the bottom of the pool. Instead, you wear a specially designed foam belt that allows you to float in an upright, running position. Once you’re floating, you begin to run-—like a cartoon character—-with your legs turning, but your body not going anywhere.

They’re a little off, because I do tend to go places; I do a 50y “lap” of the College pool in about four and a half minutes. And, I know people who prefer not to use the belt. One hitch is that it takes some concentration (at first) to stay upright and not lean forward and paddle with your hands; at that point, you’re not pool-running, you’re swimming. It helps a lot to have a lot of deep-water space; the College pool is made for water polo, so it’s at least eight feet deep at its “shallow” end; I can go end to end without touching down, which I can’t do in pools with a stand-up end. (I love the pools with separate diving wells; I’ll do laps in the diving well instead of in a lane.)

The College also has a tiny little “warm-up” pool, only four feet deep, which runs across one end of the main pool, behind the starting blocks. On more than one occasion, the coach would put eight or ten runners in there and have us properly running (on the bottom of the pool, that is, not floating) around the outside until you could see a bit of a whirlpool starting (a vortex in the middle of the pool, etc.)

Then he’d start picking people out, one by one, and tell them to reverse direction and run against the current we’d made, until we’d reversed it. When I think about it, it was a pretty good way of doing strength drills without a hill.

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