Do you swim lenghts, laps, 100s, 1000s, minutes or miles? (Page 2)

That is a qwerk of mine too....all my swims end in multiple of 5 laps.  20 laps, 25 laps, 40 laps etc.

~Mike

laps for me (and yes, I consider a lap there-and-back)

i generally give completed distance and what workout was (whether time trial, intervals, pyramids.. )

double post.....

Edited by momo 2010-09-28 12:58 PM

I pretty much always say "[ x ] yards"...although sometimes I might say "I swam a mile today" or "mile and a half" or whatever (typically that'll be when I'm talking about my training with a total non-swimmer..."a mile"--or more--in the pool usually puts it into a frame of reference they can understand).

I would respond with how much time it took. I rarely tally up the total distance unless it's a measured OWS.

Whatever makes sense to you, go for it.  I suspect "25" wouldn't mean much to many people, but as long as you put some sort unit behind it you would be able to get your point across.

That being said, I would say most (or all) competitive and former competitive swimmers express their workouts in total yardage or meters. 

And a "lap" in swimmer terms is a length of the pool.  It never occurred to me that anyone would consider referring to that distance as anything else. 

Edited by rowotter 2010-09-28 1:19 PM

Yards if it's under a mile and miles if it's over.  So far it's only been over once.

Edited by blynott 2010-09-28 1:43 PM

A mile is 7 leagues!

Yards, meters, and lengths are unambiguous.  "Laps" can mean different things to different people. 

If you are at a football stadium, you can run the length of the field or you can run a lap around the field.  If you run a lap, you start and end at the same place.  Why swimmers insist a "lap" in a pool doesn't put you back at your starting point is a mystery to me. 

As for the counting boards, they just have a number and it corresponds to the number of lengths the swimmer has completed.  You'll notice that these counting boards go 1-3-5-7-9-11-13-15-17-Red so they don't increment 1 "lap" but rather 2 "lengths."

I just don't talk about it.  It's just between me & my log.

Yards.  Both pools I swim in are 25 yrds.  One time I told someone I swam 2500 yrds and he said don't you mean 2500 meters cuz 2500 yrds is just a tiny distance?  I think he was being sarcastic.....

jami 

Now I'm all confused LOL!
When I started swimming for exercise as an adult I used to count laps (to me a lap was down and back) and then figure out how many miles I just swam. The pool had a big sign that told you 1 mile was 35 laps or something like that.  
Then I started a swim for fitness class and everything was meters. Old habits die hard so I would read the workout and then figure how many laps the set would be so I could still count out the laps while I was swimming. I think I have a counting disorder though - I can drive myself crazy counting every single swim stroke. I just have to think about something else!!
Now I just read the workout and figure out a total when I get home.
Open water I just go by time in the water.

If I did a pool swim I will say the number of yards swum and maybe what type of intervals.  Like "I swam 2500 yards, warmup then repeats 200's".  I rarely do a time-only pool swim.  If OWS then usually time, unless I happen to know the distance.

Depends.... some days I just swim for an hour or so and loose track of laps/sets.  Other times I swim drills with a preset amount of yardage and I may toss in some laps in before my cool down.  It depends, but I try to be as specific as I can if someone asks me how far... which honestly isn't that often.  Usually if someone does its something like...

them: you swim today?  
me:  Yes
them:  you're crazy Dave

Hopefully Santa brings me a Swimovate so I'll know the answer myself.   

Is that a statute mile or nautical mile? We are talking about being in the water, after all!

I quote in yards, 'cause that's what the pool I'm swimming in is.

Miles. I only swim in the ocean and have measured distances by walking on the beach with my GPS.

If someone in charge is reading this, it would be great in the Training Log on this site to be able to input swimming distances in miles!

You can convert with Google pretty easily, just type this in the search box and you'll get an answer

2 miles in yards

Have to convert the other way since my logging app uses miles and not yard or meters... not sure what BT asks for.

Got back in the pool after almost 3 and half months in the lake.  It will be a while to get use to chlorine.  I was measuring in miles now its back to yardage and flip turns.  Ick. 

If I said 25 it would hundreds of yards. 

Usually yards.

Sometimes people will ask "how many laps is that?" so I'll do some math in my head, divide yards by 100, then multiply x2 to get laps.  For example, masters swim tonight was 2900 yards.  Divide by 100 is 29, then multiply by 2 is 58 laps.  Easier to use numbers like 100 and 2 than trying to divide by 50.

Most people in general seem informed enough with yards or laps.

Then every now and then someone will ask how many miles........(1 mile  = 1760 yards).  For 2,900 I'd probably say mile and three quarters.....

Yards in the winter, meters in the summer.

I measure by time and by what weaknesses I worked on in the pool, or specific yardage sets. For example a main set 3 x 500 yard set at a fixed stroke count striving to increase rate with each repetition is a fare more valuable piece of information for me to know than the total amount of yards I did. I keep track out of curiousity when the yards get above 2500 or so, but otherwise I record total time and sets done. anything that was not a specific workout "set" is usually form based focus of easy "perfect" pace swimming...the pace at which I can execute that specific point of technique perfectly.

meters

I use meters since that's how the pool is measured.  I also get people who ask, "So, how many times up and back is that?" 

What swim meets did you attend?  32 meets?  With all due respect, you or the parents or coaches are incorrect.  Take it from a swimmer of 30+ years, college swimmer, and former college coach.

Sorry, but all those events are, in fact, swum in the lengths you listed in a SCY pool.  A swimming mile, a 1650, is 66 lengths.  When you get "lapped" in swimming, the faster swimmer has gone down and back and passed you.  The lane counters for distance events do correspond to the # of lengths you have to swim.  A 500 is 20 lengths.  The counter at the opposite end from the blocks shows 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, and the orange square (for last LENGTH).  A LCM meter 1500 (30 lengths) would show odd #'s from 1 to 27 and then the orange square again.

As to the OP's question, usually total yardage or meters.  Usually convert everything to yards for training log.  Today I swam 2000yds recovery from 70.3 Augusta.