Swimming Made Easier for Bikers

Getting Started:  Indoor Pools in our area

In the first paragraph, I assumed your gym has an indoor pool.  If not, you can swim at a public indoor pool if you are a resident of Burlington or Gloucester Counties.  By no means a complete list of pools, appropriate county residents have access to facilities like Burlington County College’s Pemberton campus (25-yard pool), the Gloucester County Institute of Tech, which has two 25-meter pools (actually one 50-meter pool separated by a bulkhead), and the RiverWinds facility in West Deptford.  Military veterans may swim at the Fort Dix facility if they can secure base privileges.  Moorestown residents can swim at the Community Center during public hours.  Some of these charge a daily access fee, some don’t; all have scheduled open swim times.

Private membership gyms like Future Fitness, L.A. Fitness and Bally’s all have 20- or 25-yard pools. Other indoor pools within Tri-County Cyclists’ area includes the Aquatics and Fitness Club (Springdale Road in Cherry Hill,) the Jewish Community Center in Cherry Hill, Virtua Health and Fitness in Voorhees, the Burlington YMCA, and the Health & Fitness Center in Medford. The area’s premier aquatics training facility is Jersey Wahoos in Mt. Laurel.

In a 25-yard pool, one length (swimming up one length of the pool) equals 25 yards, and swimming back and forth equals 50 yards.  Seventy-two lengths (also called laps) equals 1,650 yards, or one mile. In a 25-meter pool, 60 lengths (laps) equals 1,500 meters, or one mile.

Equipment tips:

You’ll need your bathing suit, (for guys, yes, it can be your biking shorts but the wet chamois will weigh you down unnecessarily), towel, and goggles and possibly a swim cap for comfort.  I recommend always swimming with a cap, even for guys, it eliminates any chance of your hair messing up your breathing and helps your head cut through the water more easily. Swimming aids such as pull buoys, hand paddles, and kickboards are helpful but you may want to try this equipment out (borrow from a friend, or use whatever is available at your pool on deck) before purchasing, and you certainly don’t need them for the drills I am suggesting.