OW pacing

Every time this subject has come up, I have marvelled because my experience has been the opposite. Example. In a recent work, I did a 1000 SCY in 15:00 or 1:30 per 100 yards. Compare that to my last 5K time of 1:18:57 which translates to 1:26.6 per 100 yards. I've finally figured out why my OW pace is actually faster than my SC pool pace! (at least when the OW is a lake with no significant current and when we're talking of distance of at least 1000 yards). It all has to do with oxygen exchange. When I swim open water, they are none of those pesky turns to breathe through. When I have to turn as often as every 25 yards, my breathing practices stink and by after about 700 yards or so, I really begin to lose efficiency. I actually have a solid flip turn that served me well back in my sprinting days, but the breathing in and out of turns leaves me building up an oxygen debt that doesn't occur for me in open water when I typically follow a 2 breaths to one side / 2 breaths to the other pattern without interruption. I can tell this is occuring because lactic build up for me comes much sooner in pool swims than in open water, and eventually my turns start getting very sloppy. The difference can be up to 3 seconds per 100 over a 5K for me. I'll have to work on this should I ever want to improve in postal swims. Any ideas? (or should I jump to the main board on this one?) I feel your pain. On the main board I recently started a thread something like "flip turns are killing me". The best tip might have been about not blowing out much air during the tumble. That and some dreadful hypoxic work seems to be helping me. But that stuff is not much of an issue for open water swims. I'm not near where you are at distance wise (my longest race pool or OW is a mile) but I know where you are coming from. I did some one hour swims in OW in lakes on my own last summer and was just amazed at how relaxed and great I felt with so much oxygen. I felt like I could have gone another hour. In the pool, I've got 1000 yards before those damn flip turns start taking their toll. I suppose after a while they must take a such a toll that any time advantage from the push off is more than negated by the overall fatigue that sets in. As such I would think if you did open turns then your pool speed would actually still be equal if not faster?

Every time this subject has come up, I have marvelled because my experience has been the opposite. Example. In a recent work, I did a 1000 SCY in 15:00 or 1:30 per 100 yards. Compare that to my last 5K time of 1:18:57 which translates to 1:26.6 per 100 yards. I've finally figured out why my OW pace is actually faster than my SC pool pace! (at least when the OW is a lake with no significant current and when we're talking of distance of at least 1000 yards). It all has to do with oxygen exchange. When I swim open water, they are none of those pesky turns to breathe through. When I have to turn as often as every 25 yards, my breathing practices stink and by after about 700 yards or so, I really begin to lose efficiency. I actually have a solid flip turn that served me well back in my sprinting days, but the breathing in and out of turns leaves me building up an oxygen debt that doesn't occur for me in open water when I typically follow a 2 breaths to one side / 2 breaths to the other pattern without interruption. I can tell this is occuring because lactic build up for me comes much sooner in pool swims than in open water, and eventually my turns start getting very sloppy. The difference can be up to 3 seconds per 100 over a 5K for me. I'll have to work on this should I ever want to improve in postal swims. Any ideas? (or should I jump to the main board on this one?) I feel your pain. On the main board I recently started a thread something like "flip turns are killing me". The best tip might have been about not blowing out much air during the tumble. That and some dreadful hypoxic work seems to be helping me. But that stuff is not much of an issue for open water swims. I'm not near where you are at distance wise (my longest race pool or OW is a mile) but I know where you are coming from. I did some one hour swims in OW in lakes on my own last summer and was just amazed at how relaxed and great I felt with so much oxygen. I felt like I could have gone another hour. In the pool, I've got 1000 yards before those damn flip turns start taking their toll. I suppose after a while they must take a such a toll that any time advantage from the push off is more than negated by the overall fatigue that sets in. As such I would think if you did open turns then your pool speed would actually still be equal if not faster?