I will be turning 50 this year, and in celebration of this I would like to start doing open water swims. Never done any real swimming except in a pool and was wondering how to get started. Do you just pick an event and show up and hope for the best in such a foreign environment or are there ways to train or are there any clinics to attend specializing in open water. I am in Northern California but would love an excuse to travel some place for a clinic. Thanks. Paul
Former Member
Paul,
I've started OW races just this month and I'm hooked!
As a beginner, besides working on longer training sessions and the suggestions of the other in this thread, I found it really important to get into the lake or ocean environment and get comfortable with waves, fish, salty water in your mouth, and all the rest, AND at the same time to feel the great pleasure and freedom I find to swim without the confines of a pool around you.
I think if you swim seriously already, a 1 - 2 M race should be no problem for you if you do just a little acclimatization to the OW race environment and longer training sessions you'll do alright. So sign up for a race and go for it!
- Thomas
Oh to be an open water swimmer or not?
I have done some that were fun, some were not.
Some were in warm water, some were in cold water.
I had some scary momments and some not scary.
I travelled the world because of these OW swims.
Now give me a pool 50m long and let me swim a 50 or a 100 free (crawl) or fly as fast as I can.
I will leave th Open Water to everyone else.
If you have no open water venue in which to train try swimming a 1k or 1500 without doing turns on the wall, just practice a roll turn about three feet from the wall and continue swimming without a pushoff. There is a huge difference in your fatigue level when you don't have the little break a push off the wall affords! Also figure out how you want to do your sightings, I have a certain rhythm to my stroke, three breaths to the left and one to the right, when I swim long ow, I sight on the second left side breath about once every four or five cycles. I like to pick a tree or other landmark to watch until I get closer to the buoy. I find a swim straighter that way.
If you are looking for an open water opportunity, you may want to consider traveling north next month to Oregon for our Elk Lake series July 27-29. his is a beautiful natural alpine lake above Mt. Bachelor near Bend. There are five races over three days, 3K on Friday evening, 500m and 1500m Saturday, and 5K and 1K on Sunday. The 500 is a time trial format, one swimmer at a time down a 250m lane line. the 1K race is done with "heats" of swimmers starting 3 minutes apart and follows a course along the shoreline, lots of tactical maneuvering with a group of swimmers about your speed, my favorite. You can find out more about this event at our website, www.swimoregon.org. This is the only open water series I do on the Oregon calendar because its the most fun and a very beautiful site. The weather is usually quite warm but cools off a night and you can camp right on the lake in a group campsite with other swimmers.
Don't worry Paul sounds like you'll finish the race as you can swim well enough.
My last experience had been that at the starting line I placed myself at the outer edge AND SO WAS EVERYONE ELSE! It was too late to go somewhere else so i just had to rough it out. I like your spirit Aquageek that you've just got to deal with it - I don't see any other way.
By the way, being able to look out to your left by breathing part of the time on the left helps if you are not a bilateral breather already just to not run into other swimmers so you might want to work on that too.
Over here (Italy), the tris are pretty fast (and they have to be part of an affiliated master swimmers club to participate in the OW races in the first place) so I DON'T have the pleasure YET of blowing past them.
