Mills College Pool

Love their hot tub! I swam my workout… one lap, and then sat in the hot tub for what seemed like an hour (I’m guessing it was 2 – 5 minutes). Put a neck floaty on and quickly fell asleep. Someone (a lifeguard) came and woke me up, said it wasn’t safe to doze in the hot tub, and suggested I hit the shower. Good idea. I asked if I could bring wine the next time, and they said no. I appreciate the nonjudgmental reception I received. Good recommendation from a a former Padded Lily. I recommend. Not sure about swimming multiple laps though… too much work to go back and forth.

Beautiful pool and grounds but don’t know what’s happened to the life guarding of late. Consistently distracted, friends visiting with whomever is on duty, chatting etc every time I visit. If you want to hang out and chat please don’t do lifeguarding.

For years, people around me told me how nice it was to swim at the Mills College pool. Being environmentally minded — and time sensitive — I resisted. Afterall, I live only a couple blocks away from Temescal Pool, why should I go all the way down to Mills to swim? Well, last August — after some pool princess put on flippers and decided that it was appropriate to swim UNDERNEATH other swimmers without checking in with them in advance of executing this plan and creating three near misses for head-​on collisions and refusing to apologize («I’m sorry if YOU were SCARED» instead of «Sorry — that was rude of me») — I went to Mills.
It takes me 34 minutes to swim a mile at Mills — compared to 50 – 60 minutes at Temescal. Why, you may ask? TRAFFIC. The Temescal pool is always full of people — nobody is good about paying attention to pace in a lane and it’s all circle swimming. Mills is pretty big, and I have never had to circle swim. People split the lanes — they get in, have their swim, get out. No sitting in the pool at the end of the lane chit chatting and blocking others from doing flip turns or any of this other nonsense you see at Temescal.
If you’re a serious fitness swimmer (vs social swimmer) — check out Mills. But — not too many of you — I don’t want that place to get crowded!
The downside of Mills is that they tend to move around the lap swimming schedule frequently and they are closed down for swim meets. The pool is also closed for two weeks in December (this year they closed several days earlier than advertised).