My wife and I did our first triathlon(sprint distance) yesterday. I gotta say, I am addicted. However, I freaked out a bit in my first open water swim(500 yds). I was able to calm myself down each time I became nervous but to be completely honest, the swim SUCKED! Ive always been a decent swimmer in the pool and found out saturday how different ow is. Only similarity was that I was wet on both occasions. I completely abandoned my pool technique and for all intensive purposes I dog paddled 500 yds. When I did freestyle, I swam with my head out of the water the whole time. Have any of you accomplished swimmers experienced this? I got nervous and let it ruin my swim. I found a new love in competing and would like to work up to an olympic/half ironman distance, but ive got to get past this unknown fear. Will this come with time and more ow training? Thank you guys a ton for any response.
Wes
It takes some time to get used to OW swimming but many people grow to really enjoy it. Sighting is easier than it first seems. For one thing, there are a bunch of swimmers around you going the same direction. You can keep track of them without doing a full stop and sight--if you are on a different course than the pack, the odds are pretty good that groupthink is right and you are wrong. If its your first few swims, don't worry about your placing as much as work on getting comfortable sighting, swimming in a pack, doing quick looks rather than full stops as someone described above. I find that I sight best when I do a couple quick looks on successive strokes--the multiple looks give me a chance to figure out what I am seeing more easily.
Good luck, and doing practice swims really is a good and necessary idea.
It takes some time to get used to OW swimming but many people grow to really enjoy it. Sighting is easier than it first seems. For one thing, there are a bunch of swimmers around you going the same direction. You can keep track of them without doing a full stop and sight--if you are on a different course than the pack, the odds are pretty good that groupthink is right and you are wrong. If its your first few swims, don't worry about your placing as much as work on getting comfortable sighting, swimming in a pack, doing quick looks rather than full stops as someone described above. I find that I sight best when I do a couple quick looks on successive strokes--the multiple looks give me a chance to figure out what I am seeing more easily.
Good luck, and doing practice swims really is a good and necessary idea.
