Tips for the Open Water Triathlon Swim

Video Transcript

"Although you may compete in some triathlons, especially in the spring that have pool swims, a true triathlon takes an open water swim. And there are some special considerations when competing in an open water swim. Some of them you can address in training and some of them really just need to be addressed by the experience of doing the races. One of the most basic tips: put on your goggles, then put the cap on over top of the goggles and that way, if you collide with somebody and their hand drags along your head, it won't rip your goggles off. You need to practice swimming in your wet suit. Swimming in a wet suit is completely different than swimming without one. You'll probably use one to two strokes less per length, you'll glide more and you'll ride higher in the water. So, you can take it into the pool and swim a bit in it just to get accustomed to it. It feels very different. It's very efficient. The poorer swimmer you are, the more you'll gain time with the wet suit. If you have really good body position already, the wet suit won't pick up a lot of time but most people will see a three to five second per hundred improvement and that's a really nice thing. Another nice thing, of course is that you're going to be able to wear what you're going to run and bike in underneath the wet suit and then just peel it off and be ready to go. So even though you're going to lose a bit of time taking a wet suit off, you gain it by having that gear on underneath. Some other specifics when you think about open water swimming is you need to get used to starting fast. It's real easy to get lulled into the group your with. So you want to get off the line quick and you could practice that in swimming by doing some fast fifties right before you do your long sets or something like that to get out and then quickly settle into your rhythm. You don't want to just kind of ease into the thing you get into a slow group. If you have the opportunity to go to a lake to swim with a little triathlon club or something like that to practice open water swimming, it's a great thing to do. You could practice drafting off somebody, what it's like to swim right close behind and again that's just best experienced by doing it. Some other things you can practice in the pool, sighting. In an open water swim, every six or eight strokes, you need to chop the stroke short and stick your head up. Staying on course is a whole other aspect of open water swimming. So try to pick something on the shore line, not the buoy that you're swimming for, but a boat ramp or a home or lamp pole or something so that if you've got a sea of bright orange caps in front of you, that you still know what you're swimming for. So those are some real key and specific things for when you tackle that open water swim."