I took a few days off from swimming after the Son of a Swim, but got back in the water today.
I admit it, I wanted to enjoy the "Hey, woah, I did it!" for a little longer before I started critiquing the swimming. 'Cause there was a lot to critique.
My next swim is going to be the Boston Sharkfest. I'm intimidated about this one because it's actually a RACE where people are gonna be all competitive and stuff and be wearing expensive wetsuits and kick other swimmers and swim over them and all that nonsense. I'm just not gonna look like I belong in this crowd.
I'm going to admit something right here. I don't give much of a rip how fast I go as long as I can complete the swim in the time allotted. I think they give you the shepherd's crook at fifty minutes, which is pretty ample for a 1500 meter race, and even I can do better than that in a pool. My open water skills, however, aren't so hot and I keep falling back to breastroke for sighting. So, I'm buckling down in my training and have quit screwing around with so much breastroke in favor of you know, like swimming the crawl as fast as I can for intervals.
Intervals in the open water, at least the way I am doing it, seem to involve a lot of counting. So, I'll swim 100 strokes as hard as I can, catch my breath for a bit, then swim as hard as I can again... lather rinse and repeat for a mile or so. It's not scientific, but it'll get my speed up.
Since I really don't give a damn about competing, why did I sign up?
Mostly at the time I thought it would be a great open water challenge that I could reasonably train for in a year's time. At the time I started up, I hadn't done any real working out for nearly two years and was in terrible shape. 1500 meters seemed like a reasonable challenge I could train for.
Yes, I did sign up for this in ignorance. Perhaps it will be fun, but I admit that swimming in a crowd of people who have just GOT to win? After I read all the descriptions of what open water races look like, I'm not so sure about the fun part. I don't mind training hard, but I do like the pristine semi-solitude of the lake swimming I've been doing.
Again, I'm competing against me yesterday. I want to swim from the King Neptune Statue to the 14th Street Pier in VA Beach. Maybe even throw in 14th Street Pier to Rudee Inlet for dessert. (These swims hover around a mile, but the surf will be a fun challenge) Next year, I want to do a longer swim at Son of a Swim -- the four or six mile.
Oh yeah, and Alcatraz. Need to start planning that one for 2016.
The challenges are about challenging me, not a competitor. And I'm okay with that.
1 comment:
OK, some ideas for you, in no particular order:
a) Line up at the back. If they line people up based on submitted times, regardless of where they put you, start farther back. Let the wetsuited-arms-flying triathlon gods go first.
b) If you think some of them may try and grab your ankles to get ahead of you, a good trick is to put vaseline on your ankles. They grab and pull, and get nowhere!
c) When I was in Cyprus, I saw some very fast kids do smthg wicked cool involving breast. And as far as I can figure it, this is how they did it. They'd swim free for a while, then all of a sudden they'd keep an arm forward while the other is recovering until both arms are aimed straight ahead. Then they'd do a couple breast strokes to sight, then immediately go back to freestyle. I've tried to figure it out in the pool, and I don't have the point where you do the breast kick just right, but I found that it put way less stress on my lower back when sighting (despite my efforts, like increasing my kick during sighting, my back still hurts after sighting every 10-16 strokes for a 5 or 10K). Perhaps you can perfect this breast stroke for sighting thing and report back!
d) My hints on sighting: If you get there early enough, take a look at the course from water level. Spot trees or houses that are in line with the buoys. Much easier to spot that gap in a tree line than a buoy that is 500 or 1000m away. If you can get into the water at each of the buoys even better, but if not, walk around the course and squat down or lie down to get a good view of what the buoys will look like. But look beyond the buoys to bigger things that are easier to see.
e) I will swim 10 or so strokes and do my alligator eyes to sight the buoy. If I'm on target, I add two strokes till the next sighting. Continue as long as I'm on target (although I get uncomfortable if I go 20 strokes or so w/o looking). If I'm off target, quickly adjust and then back to 10. If still off target, sight more.
f) If you sight while freestyle, increase your kick, or else even a small lift of the head will drop your hips.
g) Do NOT wear blue tinted goggles. For some reason, buoy colors disappear with those on. At least, they do for me!
h) Intervals in open water: 100 fast, 100 slow (no break between!). Then 90/90, and down. When that gets easy, to the pyramid down then up. Or start going up then down.
i) Try as hard as you can to never "go vertical" during a swim. Blood flow and all that.
j) If you can't escape the crowds, just swim away from them. You can make 1500 in 50 min. Swim a little off the track to avoid the arms. But, at some point, you're going to realize how much fun it is to muscle your way through those yahoos! Also, doing that breath/no-breath drill will help.
k) These "races" are fun. Fun to compete against your own times. Fun to compete against others. Fun to pass wetsuits. (tehe)
These are just ideas. Let me know if they work for you.
Enjoy!
Mike
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