Open Water Swimming help

OW is great, especially if laden with tris who can't swim. A seasoned OW specialist on my team suggested doing some long swims to get used to the distances. I would do one hour timed swims in a LC pool as preparation. You probably should work on sighting as well but doing that in a pool is difficult given you have many visual cues within a foot or two of you. Also, get your teammates to kick and hit you for a few laps to simulate the start of a race.

swim with your eyes closed at the pool. Start by taking a peek, but try to get to being able to cross 25 yds without looking. Do this only with the lane to yourself.

Just get into a safe place to swim OW and do some 1 and 2 hour swims OW. Continue with your workouts in a pool.

I'm a relative newcomer to open water swims but have done several. I like the suggestions here and will try them myself. Another thought from someone new to the game... staying to the side during the start, rather than in the middle will minimize the churning and chaos of the start. Another mistake I've made is getting caught up in the excitement of the start and sprinting out too fast too soon. Sure people will get ahead of you, but don't get alarmed. They too might be starting in too big of a rush. Also, check around for local race results. They will vary a lot for even a single distance, b/c a lot could depend on conditions along the course, so if you see one race with noticably slower times than another, check other years to see if tough conditions are routine or if just a particular year had some difficult weather/chop, etc. For my first o.w. swim, I checked out a race I was interested in, found out what the last place time was, and worked on trying to get my pool mile under that time (I still had a little work to do). I was such a newbie at the time that I didn't know I'd have to swim out to the start, but even so at least I knew what I needed to do not so much to avoid finishing last... I wasn't too worried about that... just to finish before they took down the clock and everyone went home. ;) Other than that, I wasn't really too worried about my time, just wanted to try something new. I've enjoyed these swims a lot, despite still being slow, b/c as a runner, I love being outdoors, and swimming in open water gives me the feeling of "getting away from it all" that I associate with running. I'm doing my first longer one this year. So I guess I'm hooked...Or maybe I'm just crazy! :D

Paul, I got started by picking an event, showing up and hoping for the best. In the meantime, I just kept up my training, focusing a bit more on distance than shorter stuff. Raceday came, I swam and loved it! I chose a 1miler to get me started, and I'd recommend something 1-2 mi for you. With something of that distance, training is easy - my view is that as long as you're in the water on a regular basis, you should be able to do a 1mi w/o many issues. Plus, its an easy, short way to get acquainted with the OW concept. Training-wise, it helps to do LCM work. Just made my 3rd 4.4mi Chesaeake Bay crossing - its addictive just to warn you!

I'd suggest talking to some others who know the different ocean events in a region first & see if there is an easier one that you can do first to enable you to get used to the different environment.......(the washing machine effect at the start if you are not able to out sprint the rest, feeling of a wetsuit, water temperatures, waves blocking your vision...) I'm not sure whether you guys wear wetsuits in that part of the country, but if they do, you'd definately benefit from practising in one. I get my swimmers to practice a small amount of 'face up' swimming or Polo swim some refer to it as. If you can get into the OW to practice the navigation that would also be helpful. Make sure you can breathe on either side because some OW events will call for breathing one particular side to avoid the waves! I have introduced about 20 people to OW events in the past 5 years & they are all hooked! :wiggle: It certainly gave my swimming 'career' a whole new realm that has kept me in the water for a lot longer......like you stated it gives me reason to travel, & of course there is all those 'debriefings' that have to happen over a coffee or pub meal! :bouncing:

rtood..Why didnt I think of that.. thats simple good advice, In OW seeing is not the same as in a pool, nowhere close, plus waves, things you can touch time time that you dont know what it is. You can easily swim in a big circle if you dont sight (look out where your going). Im going to practice that in my pool tommorrow, Thanks. Proberts. I would start by going to a place with OW where you can swim and getting comfortable with it. See my page for beginning open water ocean swimming. www.geocities.com/.../oceanswimming101.html

Another thought from someone new to the game... staying to the side during the start, rather than in the middle will minimize the churning and chaos of the start. Another mistake I've made is getting caught up in the excitement of the start and sprinting out too fast too soon. Sure people will get ahead of you, but don't get alarmed. They too might be starting in too big of a rush. I don't agree with these assertions. I have heard of this tactic to stay to the side. While good in principal, if you are there might as well mix it up. I don't think staying to the side allows for much crowd avoidance and you'll be running over everyone who also thinks staying to the side is the good plan. If you are a good swimmer, you will already be better than 80% of the people out there, especially if it's a mostly tri crowd. You will probably have more swimming endurance. I tried the ole hang back and bust it out at the end and all I ended up with was more kicks in the head. So, I say take it out fairly fast to get past the riff-raff. Even assuming you will fall off a bit, you will still be well ahead of the others and have more smooth water.

I consider that a relatively fast mile.

I swim about a 27min. mile ( 1800 yds ) I don't consider that fast at all, but the tris that I have seen swim are quite a bit slower at my pool. I dont know how that time would be in rough water but my goal at first would be just to finish!