Post subject: When pool water isn't water?
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I was invited the other day to a country club, and decided to try out their pool. The pool itself looked very clean, indoors, was Olympic sized, non-heated, and kept well. Getting into it however, it felt really different. I've been to many pools in my life, and this one seemed to have mechanics which defied everything else I've ever experienced in a pool. Normally I can float on my back with ease, and would be able to read a book if I wasn't worried about it getting wet. In this pool, trying to float on my back, I started sinking under the water pretty quickly. When swimming laps, I always like to do a kind of somersault when I reach the other side and push off the wall with my feet. I usually can get ~4 feet of distance by doing so, with this pool, I got maybe one. In general trying to swim in this pool was much harder than usual, and I felt it took a ton more out of me. Jumping off the floor which I usually find easy was really difficult and slow going. Now my first assumption would be to blame myself for some deficiency. But I'm more muscular now than I've ever been, and every other person I spoke to about the pool told me this pool is the most difficult pool they've ever swam in. Some called it a "death trap" and said they prefer to swim elsewhere. So my question is, besides water and chlorine, what might they be putting in this thing? The tap water in the neighborhood around the country club is known to have large amounts of calcium in the drinking water. I'm wondering if this can somehow be related? Anyone have any ideas, or familiar with something else like this?
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I read the thread title and thought it was going to be about something else entirely
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I don't think high calcium concentration would affect the water in the way you mentioned. If you have access to this pool again, try to get a small sample of this water. If you are really curious about it, you can ask a to determinate the composition of this liquid, or even try for yourself to find roughly the density, melting and boiling points, etc. Pure water's density is easily enough to someone with little experience to float on it without trouble. I can't understand how it can be that harder to float on it. They would need to add a big volume of a liquid with lower density than water just to archive a small difference of density. And why would they do that anyway?
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Bear in mind that high calcium concentration is putting it mildly. We're talking about such high levels that water based equipment commonly break from it, and anyone who attempts to drink it regularly routinely gets kidney stones. So I'm thinking the high minerals is somehow related. Perhaps their filtering process is adding another liquid to it? There's also plenty of chlorine in it (although every pool generally has plenty of chlorine). If I ever go back, I'm considering bringing a vial to test it ... for something. Just wondering if anyone has any ideas what might have this effect.
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In all seriousness, what about nerves? It sounds like this was your first time at that country club as a whole, so you may have been more nervous about it than you realized. It's hard to float on your back when you're nervous. I know that I myself have difficulty floating when I'm with unfamiliar people, it takes me some time to get back in bounce.
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I cannot say I've ever swam anywhere where I knew the other people. Nerves also would not explain why some other people called it a "death trap" and agreed with my assessment of the water there being unusual.
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My first hypothesis is that altitude is a factor. Is this country club at a very high (or perhaps low) altitude? I'm not sure exactly how that would affect things, but I can offer a few theories. It would decrease the amount of gas dissolved in the water, affect your stamina, and it would change your own density as you attempt to float.
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Water with high concentration of salt (see sea water) makes it very easy to float on. Maybe THIS water is normal and the other pools you are used to were high on salt or chemicals.
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Bobo the King wrote:
My first hypothesis is that altitude is a factor. Is this country club at a very high (or perhaps low) altitude?
It's at 3000 feet above sea level. Most of the pools I've used were at 300 to 400 feet. Although on several occasions I've been to pools in areas with elevation of 1000, 1500, 2000, and 3500 feet, without any difficulty that I can recall. The ones I've been in at 3500 feet were not very large and were only 5 feet deep. The ones at 1500 and 2000 were all Olympic sized and 11 feet deep.
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What is the history of the country club? Is this the first country club you've been invited to?
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You should check the density of the water. That's what affects floating. If the water is too pure, floating gets harder: that's why floating is easier in salt waters.
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Interesting. The only thing I would offer is that perhaps your lean body mass percentage is higher than it used to be, meaning your own density is what's changed as opposed to the water. This would explain why it's much harder to float now, though it doesn't necessarily explain your other points. I had a similar experience when I went swimming after getting really lean, and I was expending almost all my effort trying to stay afloat while the less lean person next to me was easily floating.
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Pokota wrote:
What is the history of the country club?
I have no idea.
Pokota wrote:
Is this the first country club you've been invited to?
No.
ThunderAxe31 wrote:
You should check the density of the water. That's what affects floating.
No kidding! How much denser would it have to be though to exhibit what I described?
ThunderAxe31 wrote:
If the water is too pure, floating gets harder: that's why floating is easier in salt waters.
Typically pools are filled with local tap, with filtering and additives. Are you suggesting that every other pool I've been too has added copious amounts of salt, and this one did not? (This one being a bunch of cheapskates wouldn't surprise me.)
Andypro wrote:
The only thing I would offer is that perhaps your lean body mass percentage is higher than it used to be, meaning your own density is what's changed as opposed to the water. This would explain why it's much harder to float now, though it doesn't necessarily explain your other points.
I thought of this as well, and I'm definitely more muscular now than the last time I went swimming. But I don't think that would make it much harder for me to jump off the floor, or why other people also think this pool is really hard to swim in.
Andypro wrote:
I had a similar experience when I went swimming after getting really lean, and I was expending almost all my effort trying to stay afloat while the less lean person next to me was easily floating.
How about jumping off the floor or pushing off the wall, did you notice any significant difference?
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https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/muscle-versus-fat/ This seems to indicate that being more lean makes it harder to float in the water compared to someone with more fat.
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Nach wrote:
ThunderAxe31 wrote:
You should check the density of the water. That's what affects floating.
No kidding! How much denser would it have to be though to exhibit what I described?
I'm not kidding. Density is the only thing that affects floating.
Nach wrote:
ThunderAxe31 wrote:
If the water is too pure, floating gets harder: that's why floating is easier in salt waters.
Typically pools are filled with local tap, with filtering and additives. Are you suggesting that every other pool I've been too has added copious amounts of salt, and this one did not? (This one being a bunch of cheapskates wouldn't surprise me.)
It's not just salt, anything can make water densier. In fact, distilled water is the kind of water in which you float the least.
Nach wrote:
In general trying to swim in this pool was much harder than usual, and I felt it took a ton more out of me. Jumping off the floor which I usually find easy was really difficult and slow going.
About this, the only thing that can make swimming harder is the viscosity. Though I have no idea which substances do make water more viscous.
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It turns out that water is not very viscous, so I'd ignore that factor. For example, a quick search indicates that milk is three times as viscous as water and while I doubt many people have tested this hypothesis, I imagine swimming through milk is not perceptibly more difficult than swimming through water. Furthermore, higher viscosity should help with your propulsion about as much as it would hinder you with drag. The effects should roughly cancel out and it should not be noticeably more difficult to swim through a somewhat more or less viscous substance. As for density, I'm also skeptical of that as a standalone cause. The Dead Sea (saturated saltwater) is 24 percent more dense than pure water. Not only is this pool water likely not saturated, we would expect it to be easier to swim in more dense water, so we need to imagine some solute that decreases the density of the water. I didn't have much luck searching for such a substance (ethanol gets frequent mention, but there shouldn't be much ethanol in this pool water). Dissolved gas comes to mind, but since you said this pool is at a high altitude, there should be less gas in the water, not more. The density is directly affected by the ambient pressure and temperature, but another quick search indicates that it's affected by maybe one percent if you're talking about warm water at low pressure versus cold water at high pressure. So in short, I'm doubling down on altitude being the chief factor here. I think that you experienced some mild altitude sickness that you were able to overlook in smaller pools at higher altitudes.
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Altitude can definitely have a major impact on your athletic performance, especially if you're not used to it. However, I have trouble believing it would replicate the experience you had. I've done swim meets at altitude (without having done any altitude training beforehand), and while my times were poor, they weren't "this is completely unlike any swimming I've done before" poor. I just got winded a lot more easily. Another thing that can really affect your performance, that people tend to overlook, is temperature. Hot pools are a lot harder to exercise in than cold ones; the body isn't able to shed heat effectively, and limits your exertion to compensate. Again, I don't think that really can explain your "symptoms" on its own though. As far as fluid mechanics are concerned, you would need to get unusually low-density water in order to have trouble floating in it. I suppose it's possible that the pool is aerated (like an aquarium), which would dissolve microbubbles of gas in it. I don't know why the club would do this, but it could be a byproduct of filtration. I don't know how dissolving chemicals (like calcium or chlorine) into the water would affect its density, but my intuition is that they would tend to make it more dense, not less. In any case, water density would not explain your trouble with flip turns or swimming in general. I suppose a hot, low-density, high-altitude pool might be able to combine factors to produce what you experienced. But why would you want to swim in a pool like that? EDIT: note that aeration would probably be noticeable as unusually cloudy water. Solutes (dissolved chemicals) would be less likely to cause that symptom.
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Bobo the King wrote:
So in short, I'm doubling down on altitude being the chief factor here. I think that you experienced some mild altitude sickness that you were able to overlook in smaller pools at higher altitudes.
I've definitely experienced altitude sickness going to certain places, like The Dead Sea (I felt tremendous pressure against my head just being in the area and wanted to get out of there as soon as possible). I have not felt any altitude sickness (that I'm aware of) at any of these higher altitudes. Bear in mind that any solution to this problem would also have to explain why some regulars described the pool as a "death trap". Would several regulars also be experiencing altitude sickness?
Derakon wrote:
I just got winded a lot more easily.
I definitely got winded a lot more easily here. So perhaps altitude is a factor. According to the swim tracking device that I was wearing, it took me on average ~7 minutes to swim a lap, which is absolutely ridiculous, more than twice previous averages, due to my having to stop swimming and try to catch my breath every couple of yards during most of my later laps.
Derakon wrote:
Another thing that can really affect your performance, that people tend to overlook, is temperature. Hot pools are a lot harder to exercise in than cold ones; the body isn't able to shed heat effectively, and limits your exertion to compensate. Again, I don't think that really can explain your "symptoms" on its own though.
As I said in my first post the pool was not heated. I found the water to be cool.
Derakon wrote:
EDIT: note that aeration would probably be noticeable as unusually cloudy water. Solutes (dissolved chemicals) would be less likely to cause that symptom.
The water looked clean.
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I recently read that excess amounts of methane can cause water to behave oddly. Does this pool have an extraordinarily flatulent regular?
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So I went back to this country club, and tried out their pool again. Had a different experience this time. It was still abnormally hard to swim in, and I had to stop a lot to catch my breath, but it wasn't nearly as hard as last time. This time around, I was able to float on my back decently enough, but I would not describe it as effortlessly as I would with other pools. For being the same amount of time in the pool, according to my swim tracker, I swam ~3 times as many laps as last time. Average time to swim a lap was roughly half of last time. Flip turns now gave me ~2.5 feet of distance, and towards the shallower side, I was able to jump off the floor, unlike last time (still couldn't do so at the deeper parts). Last time I came out, I felt like a wreck, was sore for a few days. Now I'm still having a hard time catching my breath, but I'm not sore anywhere. Derakon, would recovering from a first high altitude swim ordeal and adjusting to it have this much improvement the second time around? Or should we think that whatever was in the water last time wasn't as bad this time around, but still is far from ideal?
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Water temperature can have an effect on how fast you get tired swimming. The warmer the water, the less tiring it is (well, up to a point, obviously). Swimming in really cold water for an even moderate period of time can be really hard.
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Maybe the water was just heavy?
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It's pretty unlikely there's anything unusual about the water in the pool you were swimming in. All of the symptoms you describe are adequately explained by having insufficient cardiovascular fitness and exercising at altitude for the first time. I would venture a guess that even if you look fit and regularly work out, you don't often stress your heart and lungs. Maybe you run a couple miles a few times a week at a moderate pace, but you don't push yourself to improve your times, and you don't do sprints. Swimming is also particularly prone to under-performance at altitude because you can't just "run slower and breathe harder". You have to hold your breath while exerting and slowing down your rhythm actually slows down the pace at which you can breathe. You say you averaged 7 minutes per lap in an Olympic pool, so your speed was 0.53mph (0.86kph), assuming a 50m pool length, or half that speed again assuming a 25m pool length. (It's common for "short course" lap pools to be mislabeled as "Olympic".) That's a fairly slow pace. Your average, moderately fit, middle-aged swimmer can maintain 1.5-2mph (2.4-3.2kph) for extended periods of time without difficulty. Someone like Katie Ledecky can sustain a little over 3mph (4.8kph) essentially indefinitely, while the best males are a tad faster still.