Endless Pool

I swam in one at Ball State, but didn't think much of it. I prefer a
real pool, but thats just me.

At $20,000, an endless pool costs about 36 years of my YMCA dues, less
if I had the entire family join. I know Terry Laughlin likes them for
training, because he can just reach out and correct the swimmer's
posture at any point in the session. I could see putting a few in the
average Y for one-on-one coaching.

I have an endless pool and we also have a support group in yahoo
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/endless_pool
I love the pool. I hate indoor swimming, and love to swim at midnight or
whenever i feel like it. I swim outside all winter. no it ain't cheap but
for me I am so happy to have my own pool. sometimes things go wrong but have
never been out of swimming for more than a week in the almost 5 yrs i have
owned the pool. I do enjoy the ocean, lakes and BIG pools as well, but for
convenience nothing beats the EP. We looked at swimex but it was much more
expensive and they did not encourage us to install it outside in a 4 season
climate.
Susan

"Steph" <[email hidden]_CUT> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

I have been lusting over the endless pools for some time now.
This weekend is the Ralphs Half Ironman in Oceanside, CA ... just a 30
minute drive from me and Endless Pools had a demo pool setup, so I took
off today for a long lunch to check it out in person.

The water temp was nice and they constantly checked the chlorine levels.
One odd thing was the guy said it could generate a faster current when
permanently installed, but off the shore power they had running it he
would be unable to get it to the pace I wanted. I kept scrapping my
finger on the wired grate in front.... grrrrr.

I believe there are two other major competitors in this arena, SwimEx
and the third escapes me right now. they all seem to be very similar.

I had trouble slowing my stroke down to the maximum current that could
be generated, so I finally just cut back to a much slower stroke and let
the guy adjust to match that way. With the current turned up high it
was more like open river swimming than ocean swimming -- and not very
similar to pool swimming unless you regularly swim 5 to a lane without
gutters.

This also led to another problem, with the current so high, I took more
than one mouthful of water in my 10 minute workout! No real problem and
the contstant pace versus flip turns made for an interesting swim... I
would prbably like the water much cooler.

They also had mirrors on the bottom to help you stay centered; I did
waver out of the current every now and again. Additionally, they had a
underwater camera hooked to a VCR. I have a nice video of my crawl
stroke and then an "expert" gave me some tips.

So I didn't get me 1.5 mile swim in today, probably only about 1/3
mile total. But for my extra long lunch I got a free videotape of my
stroke and some critique.

I still want a Endless Pool.
Do I have a better grasp as to whether they are worth $20,000 US ?
Ummm... yes and no. I think they are fantastic and are worth it, but I
would not be able to justify buying it for just me... not when my gym
membership costs less than $200 per year and is tax deductible.