you're getting a lot of great advice, but none of it is pertinent IMO for a first triathlon. There are two things you have to worry about:
1. physiological: you MUST get your face in the water before your race. Sighting practice in the pool is nice but it's not going to affect your nervous and reflex systems on race day. Better still if you can get a warmup in 5-10min before the race. Especially if the water is going to be cold.
2. psychological: In addition to relaxing and calming your physiological reflexes, you must PACE yourself, and be comfortable not being able to see anything. It's an ego thing, it's in the head. Start EASY. It will still be way too hard, or at least much harder than you think. Otherwise you're going to go redline and then the mildly annoying lack of visibility will become an existential threat that your body will fight or flight no matter what. See point one on a good swim warm-up.
Everything else is just details... sighting, drafting, navigation, etc. will all sort itself out.
Good luck.
Barberdolan wrote:
RowToTri wrote:
You're getting some good advice here. I did my first tri with no open water practice. What I learned is this:
Your adrenaline will be up at the start. If you do not keep it in check, you will be swimming WAAAYYY too hard at the start without even feeling like you're putting much of an effort in and suddenly feel like you are drowning 100m into the race.
Your mantra before the start and during the swim should be "swim EASY". Let the people around you go nuts. Don't let them affect you. Make it feel really easy for at least the first half of the swim if not the whole thing. Start racing when you're on your bike.
Thank you, I really appreciate this and I will be taking this advice with me on the day. It is definitely not my goal to do the swim fast. I just want to get through it with reasonable comfort. I’m far more experienced on the bike and running than I am in the water so any time that I gain will be on these courses.
Eric Reid
AeroFit |
Instagram Portfolio Aerodynamic Retul Bike Fitting
“You are experiencing the criminal coverup of a foreign backed fascist hostile takeover of a mafia shakedown of an authoritarian religious slow motion coup. Persuade people to vote for Democracy.”