6 January 2025
Europe has really good passenger protections when it comes to disrupted trains, resulting in healthy refunds of train fares based upon how delayed one’s train was. When my wife and I traveled to Paris last summer on the day of the Olympic opening ceremonies, there was a spat of terrorist attacks earlier in the day on some of the power & switching stations. This affected our Eurostar travel such that we got close to a full refund for that portion of our ticket. While we had a year to use that credit, we figured a quick weekend jaunt to Amsterdam would be a good way to spend that surplus and to see a city I’ve never been to (and one that Bella only went to once when she was a teenager).
Naturally, in addition to visiting the Van Gogh Museum and Ann Franke Haus, walking and eating our way around the city (our two favorite vacation activities, especially so when powered by stroopwaffel), I had to check out a couple of pools.
On Saturday morning, I made the ~40 minute walk from where we were staying in Houthavens to Het Marnix pool, a community pool abutting one of the canals, the canal water lapping the edges of the building. I showed up for their 9:15am to 10:15am lap swimming and found the facility to be bright & lively with some funky coloured lights and a tropical theme in the lobby (think fake palm trees, Caribbean island colour-scheme). The five lanes were wide and divided into a "BorstCrawl" (front crawl) lane, a fast lane (I forgot to capture the Dutch for this), a medium/slow lane, and then two open lanes for whatever it was people did over there! (Note that there were lane ropes in during the lane swimming session, but they had removed them for the family swim session by the time I took the picture below).
Click to enlarge any photo of Pool #713 (Het Marnix)
They have a similar "proof of entry" system to many pools where you get a wrist band after you've paid your entry fee. Unlike the typical semi-plastic/semi-paper single coloured bands at most pools that use this system, these bands came with a QR code on them which you then used to open and close a locker. While it was a pretty intuitive system to use, I did use the "translate the text" feature from the camera on my iPhone to just double-check the Dutch instructions (third picture).
Sunday morning was a far better swimming experience at the most excellent Optisport Sloterparkbad in all respects except one - there was no access to the stands or any other good vantage point from which to take a great picture of the pool, so you'll have to trust me that this is a place worth visiting.
In addition to the basics of being an 8 lane, 50 meter pool Sunday morning being set up long course:
Lane speed compliance was excellent - while I still was passing swimmers, I'd say the average pace was somewhere between 1:45 and 2:00 per 100 meters, which is pretty respectable for a long course public swim session.
The crowds were not minimal, but manageable - I shared with 6 to 8 other swimmers, which is pretty doable in long course, especially given #1.
They had multiple synchronized, digital pace clocks all around the sides of the pool. I'm always surprised when pool managers don't realize that putting a pace clock, particularly an analog one, at the end of the pool is not optimal for swimmers who want to use them.
Their "proof of entry" band + locker entry system was even better as the wrist strap fit was a more permanent thing and fit snugly around my wrist, being far less distracting while swimming with it on.
During that 3,000 meter session, I was able to do another one of my "go-to" sets - a Broken 1500 done as 3 rounds of:
3 x 50: on 0:50
2 x 100: on 1:35 (e.g., 47.5/50)
1 x 150: on 2:15 (e.g., 45/50)
The goal is to aim for your target race pace. I generally will set the interval by adding 0:20 to my target 100 pace (in this case I was shooting for 1:15s). Then, the 50s will be on an interval 2.5 seconds above the 100 interval, and the 150 will be on an interval where the 50 interval is 2.5 seconds below the 100 interval. I have always found this particular version to be a great predictor of what I can do in an actual race. My performance wasn't quite on target as I was 37/38 on the 50s (OK), but 1:16 to 1:18 on the 100s and then went 2:00, 1:57, 1:54 on the 150s. But, it was a great workout.
Weather aside (cold and rainy the whole weekend as expected), it was a great introductory visit to Amsterdam ... and now I definitely know where to swim if/when I come back.
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