What I Learned About Open Water Swimming

Many thanks to Rob for taking a group of us Cville Traithletes out to the lake at Walnut Creek Park on Saturday for some open water swimming. Those that were there, I think picked up some good tips on how to handle open water swimming. Here's what I learned.

1) At the start, it's generally better to find some clear space to swim. Try to stay out of the scrum in the middle. Rob had a great analogy that explains why the scrum at the start happens. Take a pack of straws and hold them in your hand upright. This is bascially what everyone looks like at the start line before swimming. Everyone is crammed close together and is upright either on land or treading water if it's an in water start. OK, now let all the straws go and see what happens. They all fall down on top of each other! Some starws are buried like three deep - depending on how many starws you use.

This is compelling for a couple reasons. First, it shows that the scrum is the result of simple geometry. It is not because triathletes are a bunch of hypercompetitive goons . OK maybe many are - but the scrum would happen even if the race was populated by 1,000 pacificsts and buddhists!

So, if I know that this is going to hppen no matter what. And we know WHY it's going to happen, I can take steps to make sure I'm not on the bottom of the pile of straws. I can create some space for myself. The easiest way of course is simply to move to a location where there are fewer people. I love Rob's suggestion for in water starts to get yoursefl to a horizontal position before the gun goes off. People will naturally give you space as you scull out with your hands and as your legs kick up behind them - great call!

2) Following and drafting - BUYER BEWARE. Be careful who you choose to try and follow or draft from. They may or may not know what they are doing and you could get screwed. This actually happened when we did some practice swimming. Tre headded off to the wrong buy with 1 other guy in town right behind him. They both ended up way off course and behind on that particular siwm by more than a minute.

3) Know the course really well ahead of time. During you warm up its a really good idea to be sure to have looked in detail at the entire course. Make sure you know where the first bouy is you are swimming to - some I demonstrated myself in our first practice run by swimming in completely the wroing direction. Make sure you know where the turns are and how you want to handle them. Know what the finish area looks like and what you'll need to deal with.

4) Keep swimming! Whatever happens, just keep plugging away. It takes A LOT more energy to restart once you've stopped than it does to simply slow down a little bit while you ctach your breath if you need to.

Rob had lots of other good tips too, but I wanted to capture a couple key things I took away.