Birthday Swimming Rule of 60 (pools #780 & #781)
- Mar 30
- 4 min read
Updated: Jun 28
31 March 2026
As I wrapped up my 5,900 total meters in my second pool of the day to celebrate my birthday ... and then reflected on text messages with my swimming-father who was about to celebrate his 83rd birthday and who was resisting swimming my "gift" to him of a very creative 2,075-meter workout (e.g., 83 x 25) ... I came to the conclusion that I need to develop "Swimming Rule of 60" to guide future birthday swimming celebrations, completely stealing the idea from famous librarian Nancy Pearl's "Rule of 50" for reading as you age.
Because life is too short (and getting rapidly shorter after the half-century mark) and because there's too much good literature to waste your time reading bad literature, her reading rule is simple:
Until you turn 50, you must read the first 50 pages of a book before you can decide the book is not for you and stop reading it.
After 50, you subtract your age from 100 and that's the number of pages you need to read. So, I can read 41 pages now and relegate an unengaging book to the "permanently not read" pile.
Now, I firmly believe (with the wisdom that comes from over five decades of swimming) there's no such thing as a "bad" swim workout (even my second swim had its positives). But, I do envision that my ability to crank out the volume will inevitably decline.
So, my personal Swimming Rule of 60 is this:
Until I turn 60, I will swim 100** meters for each year to celebrate my birthday.
After that, I'll subtract my age from 110 and swim 100** meters times that number.
Why have I chosen 60 and 110? Because ...
I'm pretty confident I'll still be able to swim 6,000 meters easily next year.
And, if I'm still on this earth when I turn 100, I still want the challenge of swimming 1,000 meters!
As for the pools I used, I finally made the time to trek way down southwest of London to start my day by making the Hampton Pool, a highly rated heated lido that fellow swim friends and other Instagram pool tourists have been telling me I need to get to, pool #780 on my #1001Pools list.
It's a cherished institution, with nothing but effusive praise online. The first lido on these grounds goes back over 100 years to 1922, with some renovations in the early 1960s, and has largely been in operation that entire time, other than a five year closure between 1980 and 1985. It is iconic not just for its unique 36 meter length, but also for being open 365 days a year and for hosting a number of events throughout the year, like full-moon evening swims and summer solstice swims which start with the 4:30am sunrise!
As you can see from the picture above, they set it up like a proper training pool and my fellow swimmers in the lightly attended late morning, weekday time had solid attention to the lane speed designations. While many pools have guidelines like below ...
... my fellow swimmers adhered well to rules 1,2 and 4.
As an aside, for anyone reading this far, does anyone really tap other swimmers on the feet to pass them? That seems a rude and jarring thing to do to someone else. The length of the pool and only sharing the fast lane with only 2-3 other swimmers meant I could just swim around my lanemates when I needed to pass them.
But that rule did remind me of my age group swimming days when, rather than tapping the feet of a slower swimmer in front of us, we used to grab their ankle and yank the person backyard, both stopping them in their tracks and propelling us forward. I doubt that would go over well in a public lap swim session ... though I have been tempted over the years with people particularly obtuse about their own speed relative to the lane's designation ;)
I did a traditional workout with sets that totalled 100 lengths, to mark 3,600 meters as a start to my day, and then capped off my morning with a great coffee and snack at their cafe overlooking the pool:
Hampton Pool is sited on the edge of Bushy Park, an 1100 acre Royal Park whose origins date to Henry VIII's reign in the early 1500s. What I saw on the map was a bucolic way to meander over to Teddington Pools, which would become pool #781, and the park delivered. I got to spend a good chunk of the roughly two mile walk between the pools strolling through the grounds of these well-manicured and well-kept grounds. It was a typical spring day in London, with clouds but no active rain and the temperature probably in the 12° C to 14° C range, pleasant enough for a body well-warmed from a swim and the flat white.
What I didn't expect to get was communing with nature. I had done no reading on Bushy Park before my swim and so was unaware there's a herd of red deer that roam the grounds. These are the largest land mammal still on the British isles and I got up close and a little too personal with them before I thought wiser and backed away.
Safely to Teddington, my 2,300 meters was less idyllic than the walk or my Hampton swim. While they officially had lane swimming, four of the six, 25-meter lanes were given over to a structured class, leaving me swimming around what looked to be the octa- and nona-generian set in the remaining two lanes. I had had some vigorous sets earlier, but, even at drill or kick-speed, I was passing people, stopping frequently and generally wondering if my heart rate would ever crest 60 BPM! I leaned into primarily drill work, paying attention to my catch and hand position across fly, free and backstroke.
I dutifully got in my required 2,300 meters, though, and reminded myself that a slow swim is better than no swim, and a day free from the frustrations, inanity, bureacratic BS and stress of the corporate world is a GREAT DAY indeed.
** Corrected my original post where I had written 1,000 meters instead of 100 meters!!
