Mr. Annoying

Since the beginning of January I've been waking up at 4:30 EVERY weekday morning to get in a second (or first, depending on how you look at it) workout every day. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday are Masters days. I'll have to tell you about that sometime, but first I have to figure out what the women in my lane are named. I think it's Sue, Suzie, and some other S name that sounds like Susan but is not. Sally maybe?

Anyway, every day we do what I would have once thought impossible: we're actually IN the water by 5:20 AM, and warmed up, ready to go by 5:30. We always finish around 6:30 when the pool opens for general adult lap swim. Sometimes people show up a little before 6:30 and sit on the benches in board shorts or with silly goggles and snorkles in their hands waiting for us to finish. You can tell that they're all the type that swims breast stroke and never gets their hair wet, or takes one minute to splash across the pool. I actually like seeing them sitting there though, because it means that we're almost done.

Today we did short sets: short sets of fast free, short IMs, short pull sets, short kick sets, short sprints. By the time we got to the kick sets, the rec swimmers had already begun to trickle in. Must be 6:20. The next time I had a rest at the wall I reached for my water bottle and there, right next to it, inches from the pool, were a pair of gnarley, hairy old man feet. I looked up and on top of those feet there was a man in his 60s, goggles already on, arms crossed, glowering down at me. I pushed off, did my 50 of whatever it was, and when I got back and looked up again, I was still staring up his chicken legs at his speedo-clad package. He hadn't moved and was still glowering. A few lengths later I came to my rest, and to my relief, he was gone. Gone from my life, but not from other lanes'.

In the locker room after we'd finished (right on time at 6:30, mind you) the women were doing their usual gabbing. "Did you see that Annoying was here today?" said Anne (the most uncouth of the group). I appreciated that he had a nickname, but it could have been more creative. At least pick the right part of speech! Anyway...
"Is that the guy in the speedo who stood at the end of my lane giving me dirty looks for 5 minutes?" I asked. Yep. "Thank goodness he went away, he was making me nervous."
"Oh no, he didn't go away," said Rachel who was a hard core competitive swimmer through college. "No, he got in. He decided that our pace was the one that suited him best and he got in our lane and tried to swim with us. And it was only 6:20."
Now I'm the first to get on a soap box about gym etiquette, especially in the pool... He was definitely out of line, and definitely did what he did just to be an ass hole. And the fact that he does this sort of thing often is pretty inconsiderate. But you gotta admit, it is pretty funny.