I raced Nationals this past weekend and really screwed up on the swim. I was with the main pack heading north which I was pleased with since swimming is my weakness. I even passed some swimmers who had trouble sighting and breathing with the swells (not an issue for me since I swim in Lake Michigan and used to those conditions). However, there was a jam up at first turn and I had to go wide to avoid the mess. The problem was I ended up going way to wide and couldn’t see where I was going because sun was right in my sight. I was sighting frequently at time but couldn’t see swimmer in front or buoy. I lost the pack and never made it back. I also ended up swimming extra ~100 yrds per my garmin.
If I was going to be swimming into the sun then I would prefer to have mirrored goggles. Polarized would be another good option but I would prefer mirrored.
mine are mirrored and polarized. so gear is not issue unless, tyr special ops 2.0 isn’t as good as others.
I know my garmin isn’t very accurate. However, my friend’s garmin (fenix 5s vs my 5) wasn’t too far off actual distance, but she was in a different wave. What I find interesting is that she is a terrible sighter. She’s a better swimmer than me (front of MOP in nationals) but she can’t swim straight (at least in practice).
As I think about this more, I guess I should have practiced swimming east in warm up. There might have been at least some major/larger landmark to sight off of that was better than the buoy.
I raced Nationals this past weekend and really screwed up on the swim. I was with the main pack heading north which I was pleased with since swimming is my weakness. I even passed some swimmers who had trouble sighting and breathing with the swells (not an issue for me since I swim in Lake Michigan and used to those conditions). However, there was a jam up at first turn and I had to go wide to avoid the mess. The problem was I ended up going way to wide and couldn’t see where I was going because sun was right in my sight. I was sighting frequently at time but couldn’t see swimmer in front or buoy. I lost the pack and never made it back. I also ended up swimming extra ~100 yrds per my garmin.
Any tips besides stopping to reorient.
Dark Mirrored goggles. Mine are called an “eclipse” tint from TYR, they’re virtually useless indoors but fantastic in overcast to bright conditions.
figure out the course beforehand to determine if you’re going to be swimming into the sun, and look for huge landmarks on the horizon
Use the sun as a landmark if you know where the buoy is in relation to it. For example, on Monday I swam an OW course in the evening, the second leg was almost directly into the sun. Once I got a glimpse of the buoy I figured out that the sun should be at about 1 o’clock. Put me right on course for the next 200m or so until I was close enough to just see the buoy easily. That doesn’t really work if the sun is such that you can truly see nothing.
If you can swim or kayak the course ahead of time, try to find large buildings, bridges, trees to sight off of.
Depending on the pack, playing follow the leader (draft) can help- . I know, you can get behind someone that sights poorly too, but generally groups don’t go far off for to long.
How far are you away from those off to your right or left? This gives you some indication.
If you T -boned someone, one of you are off course 😜
My Garmin had it a little over 900yds–other folks that I saw on Strava were similar.
I swim in Erie pretty frequently in the morning a little West of there-- I used mirror Speedo MDRs and they’re fine–just as others have mentioned, figure out the buoys position relative to the Sun…and go towards that.
Now, I breathe on the left a whole lot more easily than the right, so I took the “inside line” most of the way and sited a bunch off of people that curved more. That hurt me a bit around the markers themselves, but not too bad. Just wish it was longer so I could keep ahead of the bikers.
I recommend Roka mirrored goggles. I use the F1 as it fits my narrow deep set eyes. They have other models to fit your face and they come with 8 varieties of nose pieces to dial in the fit. They have different tints for every type of lighting.
The Roka gaskets seem to get tighter as the swim gets longer. I used Tyr nano nest pro’s for years and they weren’t as tight, but they ended up leaking like a sieve within a few months. Some don’t like tight gaskets, but I’ll take that over leaks any day of the week.
Ha Ha - I opened this thread thinking, “I could not see at Nationals, so maybe I will learn something.” And sure enough, your post was about the swim at Nationals. I had same problem during the race and ended up going a bit wide - maybe 25 yards or so before I realized and worked my way back on course. I was wearing Aquasphere Kaiman’s that were darkened but the sun was right in eyes and I could not really see the buoys. Just tried to look for other bright yellow hats and followed all of them. Maybe different goggles for really bright days like Saturday?