For the past 6 weeks I've been training for a triathlon. The first one I thought about doing was in April, but I decided it was better to watch at least one before attempting to compete. This was a good decision and I learned a lot about how the pool swims work and the transitions. This weekend was the Olympic Taylorsville Lake Tri and I again went to watch and see how it's done in open water. I also packed my wetsuit and swim stuff because I thought I needed to give the concept of open water swimming a try.
I befriended another tri newbie and we discussed what we were watching and how everyone was doing things and the swim topic came up. He was very new to swimming and said he was only doing pool tris initially. I've water skied, kayaked, been on swim teams, and jumped in more ponds, lakes and oceans than I can count, but this got me to questioning, are open water swims really that different? After everyone was done with the swim and on to the bike, I put on my gear and waded out, put my head into the water, took a stroke and came up gasping! What the ....! I tried to put my head in again and take a stroke...panic. So I kept moving forward and tried to calm myself down to figure out what was happening. The cool water in combination with no visibility seemed to be stressing me. I breast stroked easily out to the buoy and commented to one of the still present race spotters how freaky swimming in open water was. She commented with no sympathy at least there are no sharks or jellyfish. Note to self: Triathletes don't whine!
I bobbed around for a few minutes thinking about how I would feel if I didn't have a wet suit on. Could I adjust my goggles while treading water? The wet suit adds a lot of buoyancy. I then headed back to shore, but submerged my head completely doing the breast stroke. After a few dunks, I attempted the crawl. I made it about 10 strokes before I had to go back to breast. Now the issue was the disorientation of not being able to see and this seemed to be messing up my breathing. I floundered back to shore and sloshed back to the truck depressed and a little mad. Was I in over my head with this open water stuff?
On the drive home I talked to TJ and confirmed that what I had experienced was similar to his first open water swim. I decided I needed a new training plan. I had 3 weeks to bump up my swimming and get the panic under control. The first thing I did was go straight to the pool and see how far I could actually swim at the crawl. I had been swimming 3 crawl, 1 breast for about 1200M. I also forced myself to use the 3 stroke breathing so I was breathing out of both sides. I tried to close my eyes a few times and panic immediately set in.
Today was day two of me figuring out how to swim in open water. I did intervals of 100M and then 30 seconds or less rest. I split the 1200M swim with 100M of backstroke and breast. I"m also trying to incorporate more flip turns as this makes you learn to regulate your breathing more and doesn't give you the split second wall rest. I swam about 200M with my eyes closed to force myself to work through breathing with no visibility. It actually was kind of relaxing once the panic went away and once I figure out how to sight swim a bit, I think I will like it. I was pretty zig zaggy with my eyes closed.
I feel better about things today. My first tri is a super sprint, so 350M swim, 10K bike and a 2.5K run. I feel a little wimpy not doing the sprint distance, but think that the shorter swim is probably smarter for my first time out.
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