I race OW, but rarely train OW because of the massive 6m great whites we have patrolling out beaches. Perth is now officially shark attack capital of the world. The last 70.3 I did in may, the last wave had to be pulled out of the water by boats, jetskis etc because of a 3m shark cruising through the swim course.

In fresh water lakes I get this "swimmer cold", my nose closes the night afterwards and still the next day I feel miserable. A lot of people seem to have this, must have something to do with allergy bit no one knows really what.
In the pool with chlorine I do not have this problem. I'm also fine in saltwater: just swum in vacation every day in the sea (no sharks in croatia :-) )

1. Short OWS season.
2. Lack of good lakes with public access nearby.
3. More controlled training in the pool (race pace).
4. Many top OW swimmers do 95% + of their annual swimming in pools

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2020 National Masters Champion - M40-44 - 400m IM
Canadian Record Holder 35-39M & 40-44M - 200 m Butterfly (LCM)

#1 Safety - I mostly train solo. I only do open water swimming if I've a group to swim with.
#2 Temperatures - The sea where I am is about 8degC in February-March, and at it's warmest it might just about get to 15degC in August-September. So, there's about half the year that I'm reasonably comfortable, but it's still chilly.
#3 Accessbility - It's a much longer drive to a suitable open water swimming location than to the nearest pool, and inconvenience of getting to the pool already regularly puts me off swimming in favour of running or cycling.
#4 Tide/Light - The time/tide of my proposed swim adds complication. Some locations need a high tide to be pleasant. Also I don't open water swim in the dark, do you?
#5 Jellyfish - Not a regular issue but for a couple of weeks recently my usual section of coastline was a no-go area for swimmers due to an influx of Lionsmane jellyfish
#6 Pollution - The more accessible areas near me are also the more polluted areas. I like to avoid swimming in outflow from sewage lines when I can!

Use nose clips. Problem solved. I'm the exact same way as is most of my OWS group here in the midworst. Started for all of us 4-5 years ago. All solved with clips.

Boring

Here in the northeast we sometimes can't go in due to bacteria counts - usually after a heat wave or big rain storm washing dirt etc into the lakes. Otherwise I try to get out once a week during the Summer more than anything just to mentally get used to being in open water. Pool swim only from Sept to May.

I can get a better workout in the pool than I can in open water.

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I'm happy that it worked out for you. But noseclips do not solve the problem with everyone unfortunately. Could try it once again though.

It's a mix of usually not having anyone to swim with and the closest public access OWS-kosher lake is 30 miles through consistently bad traffic to get to.

I hardly swim enough as it is with the pool being a whopping five miles away.

Just to give the other side of the coin, I used to do all of my swimming in the pool but this year found out about a small local lake that does open-water swimming. I've swam in there almost every weekend since Easter and it's improved my open-water swimming technique and comfort in choppy conditions immensely.

I still suck at swimming, but at least I suck as equally in open-water as I do in a pool now.

Same here. Nose plug for the OW and none for the pool. Take a little getting used to, but worth it.

I live in an area with a lot of lakes and rivers. However, we also have a lot of pollution. Worse, we have a lot of boats, so many that most places don't allow swimming, or if they do, it is confined to a small area not much bigger than a pool. The boats around here don't like to share. They speed through no wake zones, and the drivers have often been drinking. It simply isn't safe.

^^^THIS^^^

I also live in the Mohave Desert...

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DFL > DNF > DNS

We have a very short OW season here, and don't really have a group of people who are similar ability to myself around that I know of. So OW is done on an informal basis when I can get 1 or 2 others to come, since I don't like swimming OW alone. My regular swim buddy works shifts, so our schedules only align every couple of weeks.

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2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

Lack of local places for me to OWS locally, otherwise I'd do it more often.

1. The closest OWS venue is a lake in a private subdivision. I know people that live there and they do group swim but they do the swims on a day I'm not able to go.

2. The other OWS venues are about a two hour round trip drive. I'm not driving two hours so I can swim for 30 minutes.

3. I swim alone so there's a safety issue.

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The closest place I can go is an hour away. That makes it out of the question during the week. And on the weekends I don't usually want to add 3 hrs (1 hr there, 1 hr swim, 1 hr back) to an already long day of training.

I have done enough open water wetsuit swimming in my life to get in a wetsuit and be comfortable with the body position in around 50 meters. So for me open water swimming I only do if I am close to a lake on vacation. In general, I find the quality of my pool swim workouts much higher intensity because I can do all 4 strokes, do dolphin kick under water and just generally swim harder.

Just to be clear if I lived somewhere where I could quickly access water where I could swim for extended periods without a wetsuit, the picture would change somewhat. I might open water swim more. I do live close to a river where there is a massive bay (6K wide that is effectively a lake) where I did all my swimming for a few tri seasons and never went to the pool because the river is always open and there are no "hours". But that was when there were no pools close to home and work. Now I have an indoor pool 2 min from work and 7 min from home with lane swim 6 am to 4 pm and 7 to 9 pm and an outdoor pool 3 min from home/6 min from work with daily 90 min lunch swims.

There just aren't that many venues that are safe in terms of water quality, animals, boats, fishing, etc. Given that comment it should be no surprise that I won't go alone, and most groups go Saturday AM...when I'm on my bike.

Accessibility for me. I've got 20 indoor pools less than 30 minutes away from home, nearest open water swimming area is at least an hour. But when my wife drags me to some beach town for vacation, I always choose open water over the pool. Not sure if it's the change that I enjoy or the ocean swim, but I do it every year. While I feel the pool improves my pure swimming stamina, I feel like the ocean is a better workout for getting me ready for race day due to having to learn to control my body roll and breathing in the waves.

I'm the one that ditched the pool for OWS recently. After 3 weeks+ of 100% OWS, I'm still at it, but I've had to pretend to ignore a few things...

1. We definitely have sharks. I think about them a lot as I stare into the abyss. Only 5 people on the planet will be killed by a shark this year. Will one be me? I buy more lotto tickets now.

2. Red Tide! I don't know if it is really a red tide, but the water is brownish-red sometimes. I haven't died or been sick yet and water reports haven't had any warnings. Just can't see anything.

3. Seals. One charged at me with his teeth showing. Those suckers swim fast.

4. Kelp. I'll be just swimming along and bam! Kelp.

5. Parking. I ride my motorcycle to OWS now for a front row parking spot.

6. Currents. Swimming nowhere as fast as you can is pretty tiring. Great workout.

7. My wetsuit is getting used a lot. It isn't as brand new as it was when I started (even though I've had it for well over a year).

8. Sand. Everywhere.

9. Fat tongue. After about 90 minutes my mouth and tongue start getting weird. I should wash my mouth out with a water bottle more regularly.

10. NO! I'm not a mermaid. I've been asked by 3 little girls if I'm a mermaid as I swim in to shore. In 35 years, nobody at the pool has ever asked me if I'm a mermaid.

I did learn a few other things. There are a lot of people doing OWS at the beach I swim at! I had no idea. I've met new people. I've also straightened out my stroke quite a bit. I had a hitch going on when I'd breath that had me out of streamline, but now that seems to be gone and I got my body roll back. I've also started bilateral breathing (after 35 years of successfully avoiding it). It just sort of happened and it feels very normal and natural now. My school swim coach would be shocked. I'm also much faster at OWS and I'm less averse to it after doing it consistently. Oh. And I'm having fun swimming! WHOA!

Oh. And I'm group swimming Wed evening at 6 pm, Sunday at 11 am, and I squeeze in a solo lunch swim, usually on Friday. Anywhere between 1,500 - 4,500 yards (but now I measure it in miles or fractions thereof).

I'm going to stick with it until a shark gets me. Hell, I ride a motorcycle to the beach to swim in the ocean with sharks and then I go home and ride my bike on the highway. It is amazing that I'm even alive. Don't tell my life insurance underwriter.

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Hillary Trout
San Luis Obispo, CA

Your trip is short. Make the most of it.
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I'd love to focus on OWS rather than pool laps, but the closest spot being hours away really makes that tough.

Every time I cross a bridge to NJ for the weekend though (every other weekend, roughly) I make sure I get to a local lake for an organized OWS session. In a pool it feels like torture to get through 3500Y, but in a lake I feel like 4500M flies by (even though I'm slower out there).

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Too old to go pro but doing it anyway
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I don't mind ows generally, but toxic algae/ something gross in Lake Monona (IMWI swimsite) had me practically crapping my pants for about a week after a recent training swim with a group. I don't remember swallowing much water, but it was enough, apparently. Haven't brought myself to swim in that lake since then. Luckily, I'm not racing OWS again for a while and not doing IMWI. So meh.