OK, here's a dumb newbie question. Does everyone always swim freestyle in open water events?
I recently did my first one mile open water ocean swim, finished in 39:01 (don't laugh), but if I'm not mistaken, that's good enough to qualify for the Chesapeake Bay Swim next year, which is my goal. My problem is that freestyle is my absolute worst stroke (never learned fly, never want to). I regularly do two miles in the pool, easily, feel like I could keep going and going...but do mostly breastroke. I can barely do a quarter mile on freestyle.
As you probably guessed, I'm a total newbie, don't belong to any groups, never swam on a team or anything like that, just thought I can do twice the distance in the pool, so why not try it? The water was sort of choppy, so when I needed more power I did some backstroke, which is much easier for me than freestyle, and at least I could navigate better with that; I could not sight with freestyle, and probably wouldn't even have finished if I hadn't gone with breastroke (which I'm a natural at).
So my question is, should I force myself to do freestyle, or train for open water with breastroke? On a quarter mile, my freestyle isn't even faster than my breastroke (guess I'm just weird). Of course, if I ever do the Bay Swim, my goal is not to place, that's never gonna happen, just to finish - and if I finish dead last I'll be delighted, as long as I get there...
Thanks,
Sandra
Originally posted by Sabretooth Tiger
Sharkbait,
You didn't finish dead last . . . you finished first in your age group!
Congratulations.
I'm with Sabretooth Tiger (you both have cool handles btw)! When you get there and do the swim and others in your a.g. don't, you win!! I've been a back of the pack award winner myself a number of times and I agree it's pretty cool!
The women's 50-54 and now 55-59 a.g.'s have treated me especially well that way, and I figure it somehow makes up for the excesses of my youth. :D
My best swim mile is about similar to yours, Sandra.... 38-39something. But I'm impressed that you could swim that fast doing breaststroke! I got more comfortable w/ crawl stroke after working out w/ a masters' swim group... found it hard to last very long w/ that stroke at one time... I'm still slow but can swim crawl stroke for a much longer time. But in open water swims, I sometimes switch over to breaststroke every few mins. or so for sighting, then back to crawl... not the most efficient sighting method, I suppose, but it gets me to the finish line.
Originally posted by Sabretooth Tiger
Sharkbait,
You didn't finish dead last . . . you finished first in your age group!
Congratulations.
I'm with Sabretooth Tiger (you both have cool handles btw)! When you get there and do the swim and others in your a.g. don't, you win!! I've been a back of the pack award winner myself a number of times and I agree it's pretty cool!
The women's 50-54 and now 55-59 a.g.'s have treated me especially well that way, and I figure it somehow makes up for the excesses of my youth. :D
My best swim mile is about similar to yours, Sandra.... 38-39something. But I'm impressed that you could swim that fast doing breaststroke! I got more comfortable w/ crawl stroke after working out w/ a masters' swim group... found it hard to last very long w/ that stroke at one time... I'm still slow but can swim crawl stroke for a much longer time. But in open water swims, I sometimes switch over to breaststroke every few mins. or so for sighting, then back to crawl... not the most efficient sighting method, I suppose, but it gets me to the finish line.
