Pools have archetypes: the elderly lady in the flowered bathing cap doing head up breast stroke in the slow lane, the triathlete who carries her gear in a mesh bag and wears an Iron Man bathing cap, the older man who does whip kick and butterfly arms on his back and takes over entire lanes with his wide arm-and-leg radius. And then the amazing swimmer who is clearly part-dolphin and part liquid mercury, whose flip turns are what my dreams are made of.

And then there is always the middle-aged dude who holds court in the fast lane. I don't think I have ever been at a pool without this guy standing in the fast lane, not swimming, of course, talking to the regulars (anyone who will talk to him really), discussing intervals and splits and technique. He's the guy who judges everyone's stroke (loudly! Vocally!). The guy who offers unsolicited coaching tips, the guy who tells you you're not kicking from your hips, that you've got to work on your entry, to watch your crossover. The guy whose ego is so big, he will only swim his 4, maybe 6 lengths wearing fins to ensure he'll actually pass people. 

I can't stand this guy, his ego, his machismo, his mansplaining swimming when his stroke is never very strong. 

But after the lifeguard blows the whistle, and length swim ends, I wonder if he feels small and deflated, walking across the deck to the change room, his chlorine-scented power leaking from him.

I wonder if he starts counting down the minutes until the next length swim while he towels off. I wonder if his heart leaps when he locks his sensible shoes in a locker, the quarter ca-chunking as he turns the key. 

I don't know how long I can swim for, though I want to find that limit, the line were I can't possibly lift my arms out of the water. I imagine it would be somewhere around the two hour mark, though I'm really not sure. I should probably get a babysitter and try it out this summer.

Usually I try to swim for an hour, but I inevitably leave the house late, and miss out on the first 5-10 minutes of length swim's hour slot. But on Monday, after I showed up at my local only to have a sign saying it was closed, I frantically drove over to the next closest pool, and because I had a babysitter watching my kid, and knew I wouldn't get to a pool again all week (and had a head full of ideas and things I needed to think through), I swam for 65 minutes. It's not that long, but it was still longer than usual. I got into that meditative headspace I love so much, and stayed there for a good long while. 

It was one of the very best swims I've had all year.