Monday, May 21, 2012

Open Water Swim


                 The other day I finally got my first open water swim done. It's been a long time coming, let me tell you. I was really excited that I was able to get out of the pool and into something more triathlon if that makes sense. Granted, the pond swimming was not nearly as picturesque as the one above, but it was similar. Boise is known as the city of trees, and it was definitely green around most of the pond. Jeff and I were finally able to connect and get out in the water. The weather that day was perfect, a little windy, but nothing too bad. Nice and sunny, and the water was awesome. I was told about this pond from Antonio over at Tritown Boise, and this is where they actually hold some of their open water training sessions. So Jeff and I decided to try it out last Friday afternoon. I do have to say that I caught a flash back of California when we were getting ready to hit the water. The smell of neoprene coming out of the back of a pick up truck, having a towel around my waist so I could change into my wet suit in public, walking across asphalt and dirt to hit the water. It was crazy.

       The route that is plotted on the map provided by Tritown shows a triangular course across the water that will give you 0.55miles of swimming. But, if you don't know what those points are, it's kind of hard to figure your distance. Jeff and I plotted our first point, across the pond to where there was a break on the shore from the trees. We'd swim for that point, which would be the longest part of the triangle, and then reassess from there. We had no ambition about pushing the pace in the open water for the first time. The only goal was to just get out there and swim in the wet suits and practice trying to spot and stay on course for our destination.

Stepping down into the water I immediately felt the buoyancy of my suit just getting up to mid thigh. I've worn wet suits before for surfing, body boarding and body surfing, but this suit is way different when it comes to the buoyancy. I also noticed that when I was swimming. Usually, in the pool, my kick doesn't make much of a splash and stays right at the surface. But with the added buoyancy of the suit, I was putting out these monster splashes with my kicks that were totally unintentional. I guess that means that my buoyancy in the pool is pretty good???

        Another thing that I noticed while in the open water? I really pull hard to the right with my stroke. I was afraid that this might be the case. I have read multiple places that talk about how only breathing to one side will produce the uneven stroke that then pulls you to the breath side. My pull might not be as bad as I imagine since I was swimming with Jeff and he pulls to the left. Wouldn't you know it, he breathes off his left and I breathe off my right, and thats how we started off swimming too. Jeff on the left and myself on the right. So maybe my pull isn't as bad as I'm imagining it. I did start making the conscious effort to "swim left" as the only description that I can come up with. Instead of just swimming, I try to imagine that I need to swim more towards my left and try to compensate that way. I do this by keeping my left arm further out and away from my body on the pull phase of the stroke, and then crossing over a little bit with my right on the stroke as well. It seemed, so far, to work a little bit.

       I also learned that it's a huge pain in the ass to try and spot and swim and keep swimming. Another issue when you only swim in a pool and don't have anything to do but stare at a black line and look for the wall. I also noticed that I have a very hard time trying to get into a rhythm and pace myself in the open water, at least for this first go around. I don't have the stupid wall to kick off and tell me how far I've gone, and I am notorious for taking off on the swim way too fast before settling down. I've been working on this in the pool. Trying to not push out a sub 1:20 for my first 100yds because after that, it just gets me more tired. Instead, if I can keep my first 100yds in the 1:30's I seem to have a better rhythm and pace overall. In the open water, you don't have the luxury of the wall to know your distance and then check your watch.

       All of this brings me to the struggles of the open water. I'm definitely comfortable in the water, there's no fear being out there and not being able to see the bottom or seeing how far the distance is and not thinking I can make it. It's just the little things about the swim technique that need some serious fine tuning to be successful at navigating the open the water. All of this will come in time, I know. So for this first season, I will just do my best. I know that I can make the swim distance, it's just a matter of how much extra swimming I might be doing because of the poor navigation. My strategy is to start in the back of my wave, and try to follow someone around my same speed, and hopefully they will navigate the majority of the course for me. I'll still look up and spot here and there just to play it safe.

        Jeff and I hit the water and started the swim, I estimated that the distance across the pond to be close to 500yds, and based on my time to get across the pond, I'd say that was fairly accurate. I could tell though that I was going to have some problems with my suit. First off, just the short distance that we swam, I was already getting chaffed on my neck. Secondly, I felt like my shoulders were actually constricted and not able to move as freely as without my suit. Not clausterphobic or anything, but just resistance. Once we got to the other side I stood on the bank and pulled more of the suit up my arms toward my shoulders, which seemed to totally help when we continued our swim. Once on the other side, Jeff and I talked about our next move, where we were going to swim to next. We decided that since we didn't know the exact points it was useless trying to finish this triangle. Instead we opted to swim around the parameter of the pond in the same direction that the triangle would be laid out. This gave us way over the 0.55 miles that was plotted, but still allowed us to know that we got at least a decent distance swim in for the day. So off we went circling around the pond. At one point Jeff totally swam over the top of my legs. I caught a glipse of something coming up behind me, but didn't know that it was him until he was on me. I guess that's something that I'm going to need to get used to being in the open water.

         Hopefully, I will get at least 2 more open water swims in each week until the event, that would give me 6 more swims. I'm going to try and stay out of the pool for the remainder of the training sessions if I can possibly help it.  I can't wait to get back into the water and see how bad my spotting and pulling continue to be!

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