For the longest time I have said I will do an open water event after I have properly trained. I have come to realize that I will never be “properly trained” because I never seem to stay in the water. My friend said, “Just bullet sign up – I’m sure you will train then.” So I did, and I have began training, if anything from pure fear of failing. I have to admit it is very exiting and very, very challenging.
The event is the Jim McDonnell Lake Swim in Reston, VA, this May. If anyone has any experience and advice, I openly welcome it. Also, I have a question about a “cable swim” – what is it?
Thanks for the input, Wayner.
Parents
Former Member
Wayner,
I was on the organizing committee for that swim in 1999 and 2000. It will be well run (and you will be well fed, trust me, I ran the food table those 2 years), unless things have changed dramatically.
As far as the mob scene start, I do not know how it was done in 1995. But, the two years I was there, people were assigned to a "wave" of about 15 swimmers, fastest swimmers in the first wave, and the waves were started 30 seconds apart. The course managers would adjust your raw finishing time to your actual time, based on what wave you were in. This is a long winded way of saying the risk of getting run over at the Jim McDonald Swim is less than a typical open water race. (Besides, if you're a former water polo player, like me, you kind of enjoy the contact. Getting elbowed in the ribs kind of distracts you from your oxygen debt.)
A couple of tips for open water that no one has mentioned yet:
1) If you are nearsighted, get prescription goggles or wear contacts under regular goggles. You need to see to navigate. The first open water swim I did, I mistook a mooring buoy for a race marker (hey, they were both orange and they floated) and went about 200 yards off course before the life guard boat flagged me down.
2) Go out nice and easy the first half of the race, then if you have anything left, put the hammer down in the second half. You simply cannot keep up a level of O2 debt and lactate acid load in your body for 2 miles like you can for 400 or even 800 meters. Don't try. Take it easy the first half of the race.
3) On a similar theme to (2) above, spend your training time as much on improving stroke mechanics as on conditioning. The people who do well in open water have a long, efficient form that they could do "forever" and do not necessarily have a great level of conditioning that one needs to push hard in shorter, pool events.
4) Don't let all the open water stories scare you. We tell them to each other for laughs afterwards (like flag football players yukking it up about how muddy the field was when they finished the game in a driving rainstorm). They were not as bad, or as significant in the course of the race as we try to make them sound, and they become part of the "fun" we fondly recall when we have finished.
Matt
Wayner,
I was on the organizing committee for that swim in 1999 and 2000. It will be well run (and you will be well fed, trust me, I ran the food table those 2 years), unless things have changed dramatically.
As far as the mob scene start, I do not know how it was done in 1995. But, the two years I was there, people were assigned to a "wave" of about 15 swimmers, fastest swimmers in the first wave, and the waves were started 30 seconds apart. The course managers would adjust your raw finishing time to your actual time, based on what wave you were in. This is a long winded way of saying the risk of getting run over at the Jim McDonald Swim is less than a typical open water race. (Besides, if you're a former water polo player, like me, you kind of enjoy the contact. Getting elbowed in the ribs kind of distracts you from your oxygen debt.)
A couple of tips for open water that no one has mentioned yet:
1) If you are nearsighted, get prescription goggles or wear contacts under regular goggles. You need to see to navigate. The first open water swim I did, I mistook a mooring buoy for a race marker (hey, they were both orange and they floated) and went about 200 yards off course before the life guard boat flagged me down.
2) Go out nice and easy the first half of the race, then if you have anything left, put the hammer down in the second half. You simply cannot keep up a level of O2 debt and lactate acid load in your body for 2 miles like you can for 400 or even 800 meters. Don't try. Take it easy the first half of the race.
3) On a similar theme to (2) above, spend your training time as much on improving stroke mechanics as on conditioning. The people who do well in open water have a long, efficient form that they could do "forever" and do not necessarily have a great level of conditioning that one needs to push hard in shorter, pool events.
4) Don't let all the open water stories scare you. We tell them to each other for laughs afterwards (like flag football players yukking it up about how muddy the field was when they finished the game in a driving rainstorm). They were not as bad, or as significant in the course of the race as we try to make them sound, and they become part of the "fun" we fondly recall when we have finished.
Matt
