Is this pool water in mouth or lake water in pool?

I feel both have very different health problems ;)

I think I got e. coli from Lake Michigan water in mouth.

I don't know of any way to not get water in your mouth other than to duct tape your mouth closed but that is a bit counterproductive.

I have to wear a nose clip when swimming in "fresh" water because if I don't the water gets into my sinuses and causes an infection / allergic reaction. I'm OK with both pool water and ocean water though. In any case, I wear a nose clip all the time now so that I'm fully used to it. The point being, I can only breath in and out through my mouth.

Not only do I not know of any way that you can keep water out of your mouth but I can't avoid swallowing and inhaling some, sometimes. A wave catches you at the wrong moment, some one hits you at the wrong time and that inhalation or swallowing happens.

Oh, and all the mucus from your nose, if you don't wear a nose clip does go in the water along with some from your mouth along with all your sweat and anything else that leaks out of your or others bodies.

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BC Don
Pain is temporary, not giving it your all lasts all Winter.

FWIM.... Unless you have an infection, urine, while "yucky" is a LOT cleaner in terms of bacteria that spit or sweat..or hell, even just shaking someone's hand. I believe I've read that it's almost sterile.

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TrainingBible Coaching
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No.

You might be overthinking things.

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Inhale when your mouth is (mostly) above water. Water in your mouth is not (should not be) a problem; it's only a problem if you end up inhaling that water. Exhale into the water, and along with that, expel whatever water you've got in your mouth. That gives you lots of time to get the water back out. I think it's pretty unavoidable, though, to end up swallowing a bit of water here and there, especially when you're swimming with a group and you don't have a clean bow wave trough to breathe in. If your pool (or the lake you're swimming in) is at all sanitary that shouldn't be a big problem. Maybe eat some yoghurt to keep your intestinal flora happy?

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Less is more.

I purposefully drink a little lake water when I race to keep my mouth from drying out. One of the reasons why I don't love ocean or small lake swims.

If I get water in my mouth, it is so remarkable that I notice it. It is very rare. You use air pressure in your mouth to keep the water out, either by equalizing the air pressure and the water pressure or by exhaling. You exhale as your mouth goes above the surface, you breathe above the surface (you are breathing *above* the surface, aren't you :-), then you equalize the pressure under the surface. I swim with my mouth open, I do believe, but water does not get into my mouth. The only time I get water in my mouth is if a wave hits me there. Rarely happens in the pool, and even less so in open water (I swim FOP and mostly alone in races).

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"Go yell at an M&M"

yeah. A long while ago, I regularly swam in Lake Michigan. Every now and then, a wave would break on me the wrong way and I'd have a mouthful of water forced down my throat. Many races will have the same wavy environment I guess. I think Chicago sometimes dumps sewage into L. Michigan. Now that was gross. Glad I didn't think about it back then.

What if you are doing fly, back, or breast?

What about it?

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"Go yell at an M&M"

The undulation induced by the lane next to you swimming fly increases the chance of water getting into your mouth if you are swimming back. Hard lesson learned from those IM sets.

In coaching OWS I've long advised that one should not count on any given breath. You never know when wave, wind or splash might get you.
Shallower more frequent breaths will minimize water ingestion.
But, it will still happen.
With a shallower breath you can expel it back into the eater quite often.

From the title of the thread, I thought you had a drinking problem

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Take a short break from ST and read my blog:
http://tri-banter.blogspot.com/

I get water in my mouth just about every stroke, typically i inhale with part of my mouth underwater. It goes out when I exhale underwater. but a question, why do you waste the time spitting out above the water when you should be getting your head back to the neutral position?

re: mucus, that inevitably gets in the pool as well, since I primarily exhale through my nose, some water that goes into my mouth comes out through my nose. Again, no biggie...

re: GI tract issues, I'm mostly swimming in a pool, but when I do venture into open water I do check the municipal website to see if any lakes are flagged for high bacterial counts. The one that I usually swim at is a fairly fast flowing lake, so it is usually open.

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