I am a longtime pool swimmer but relatively new to open water. In the last year, I've had a handful of good workout swims in the Gulf of Mexico (while on vacation) and in a lake (here at home), so I've gotten a chance to get a feel for things like sighting, navigating, and adapting my pull to choppy waters and surf--enough to have a decent understanding of what I need to work on, anyway, and enough to know I want to do more OW swimming. I've also always been a bilateral breather, so that's nothing new.
What I haven't been able to do to this point is river swimming, but I have signed up for a 1.2 mile river race in a few months. The first leg will be against the current. Is there anything I should be keeping in mind/training for that will help attack that current head-on? I know that kicking is often not as prominent in an OW technique, but I am a strong kicker, should I be playing around with the intensity of kicks, so I'm ready to ramp it up when I'm pushing against the current? Once upon a time I swam fly and IM in meets and still do a fair amount of fly in my workouts--would a dolphin kick serve any advantage against the current? Or is that a ridiculous notion that would wear me out too much too early? Or is the main thing adjusting my pull to be fast and strong?
As I'm not an elite open water swimmer (usually finish somewhere in that second quartile of the field), I'll defer to those opinions as far as being competitive is concerned. I do get the sense there is a bit of personal preference here. I am a 2-beat kicker through most of the race until the final push when I switch to 6-beat (couldn't stop myself from doing so if I tried). My feeling is that over long distances the conservation of energy by using a 2-beat kick far outweighs any propulsion I get as a result. My other tendency is to pass swimmers in the final 20% of the race so I think that may be evidence of my strategy working for me.
As I'm not an elite open water swimmer (usually finish somewhere in that second quartile of the field), I'll defer to those opinions as far as being competitive is concerned. I do get the sense there is a bit of personal preference here. I am a 2-beat kicker through most of the race until the final push when I switch to 6-beat (couldn't stop myself from doing so if I tried). My feeling is that over long distances the conservation of energy by using a 2-beat kick far outweighs any propulsion I get as a result. My other tendency is to pass swimmers in the final 20% of the race so I think that may be evidence of my strategy working for me.
