hi everyone! i absolutely love swimming but i'm new to the idea of open water swimming, so i thought this might be a good place to get advice. i was wondering what a good way to get started is and if making the transition from pool to open water is a big deal. i'd really like to be in races like the fat salmon, etc. one day (the sooner the better!). any tips would be great and also, what were your first open water experiences like?
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The open water is a unlike a pools swim that they are almost not comparable. No walls, no lane line nor lane ropes, just you and the water. Swimming in the open water, provides a sense of oneness with the a greater world that you are part of. There are fish, rocks, wind and waves. The sky above you and a bottom below you that cannot be seen, except when you come close to shore.
Racing in the open water with few or many others is quite different than in a pool. You can start on land and run to the water, high stepping into it before bashing headlong into the open. Or start in the water and swim like spawning salmon going up a river. Watching those who swim behind your and hoping they can't catch you. Sighting the swimmers ahead of you and hoping you can catch them. Fighting to turn around a buoy. The waves that pick you up and drop you down. Getting slapped in the face when a wave breaks on you. Hitting other swimmers and being hit. Swimming in a pack and breaking away from it, to have them only pass you when you cramp up. Having the paddlers to follow so you do not have to sight.
Swimming the English Channel and quitting less than 2 miles from France because you have spent 14 hours trying to get there and you cannot lift your arms out of the water, since when you try, a knife like pain drives into each shoulder.
Open water is great.
The open water is a unlike a pools swim that they are almost not comparable. No walls, no lane line nor lane ropes, just you and the water. Swimming in the open water, provides a sense of oneness with the a greater world that you are part of. There are fish, rocks, wind and waves. The sky above you and a bottom below you that cannot be seen, except when you come close to shore.
Racing in the open water with few or many others is quite different than in a pool. You can start on land and run to the water, high stepping into it before bashing headlong into the open. Or start in the water and swim like spawning salmon going up a river. Watching those who swim behind your and hoping they can't catch you. Sighting the swimmers ahead of you and hoping you can catch them. Fighting to turn around a buoy. The waves that pick you up and drop you down. Getting slapped in the face when a wave breaks on you. Hitting other swimmers and being hit. Swimming in a pack and breaking away from it, to have them only pass you when you cramp up. Having the paddlers to follow so you do not have to sight.
Swimming the English Channel and quitting less than 2 miles from France because you have spent 14 hours trying to get there and you cannot lift your arms out of the water, since when you try, a knife like pain drives into each shoulder.
Open water is great.
