My first open water swim competition was done with pool training, but I did have at least the advantage of having had most of my early swimming lessons in a bay rather than a pool (some swimming lessons there but my main memories are of salt water and so had already long overcome any squeamishness about jellyfish, seaweed, etc.--just part of the environment!).
Often, I'm surprised at the number of people in my area who haven't learned to swim or who have only very minimal swimming skills. But I realize I also had a fortunate upbringing. Because we went to the beach every summer, my parents saw swimming as a survival skill and enrolled us all in lessons.
Yet I have overheard conversations between adults taking lessons for the first time and being afraid to put their face in the water. I applaud them for taking the step of learning to swim, just that it is surprising how much that wasn't part of so many people's early experience. A friend tells me he started swimming lessons as a kid in some township recreation program, but that budgets got cut and his swimming lessons ended.
Seems to me swimming should be a part of the standard PE curriculum as kids grow up--or at least be budgeted into summer recreation programs. It's not only at triathlons that people run into problems. Often drownings occur in boating or when un/undertrained swimmers venture into unprotected waters. Maybe even some sessions in open water....
But maybe that's a pipe dream....
My first open water swim competition was done with pool training, but I did have at least the advantage of having had most of my early swimming lessons in a bay rather than a pool (some swimming lessons there but my main memories are of salt water and so had already long overcome any squeamishness about jellyfish, seaweed, etc.--just part of the environment!).
Often, I'm surprised at the number of people in my area who haven't learned to swim or who have only very minimal swimming skills. But I realize I also had a fortunate upbringing. Because we went to the beach every summer, my parents saw swimming as a survival skill and enrolled us all in lessons.
Yet I have overheard conversations between adults taking lessons for the first time and being afraid to put their face in the water. I applaud them for taking the step of learning to swim, just that it is surprising how much that wasn't part of so many people's early experience. A friend tells me he started swimming lessons as a kid in some township recreation program, but that budgets got cut and his swimming lessons ended.
Seems to me swimming should be a part of the standard PE curriculum as kids grow up--or at least be budgeted into summer recreation programs. It's not only at triathlons that people run into problems. Often drownings occur in boating or when un/undertrained swimmers venture into unprotected waters. Maybe even some sessions in open water....
But maybe that's a pipe dream....
