What I was getting at is that I have a huge range of vision in these goggles. I’ve tried others, certainly, over my 37 years of pool swimming and 20 years of tris and OWS. I just don’t find that there’s really any greater field of vision, nor any advantage to larger lenses, other than paying lots more. All of the OW venues I’ve ever been in are rivers, estuaries, and lakes: as clear as breakfast tea on their best days and chocolate milk on their worst days. (Eagleman x 2, The Great Chesapeake Bay Swim x 2, Lake Michigan in Chicago, Louisville x 3, Columbia MD x 2, Lake Travis 12Mile Solo, and various lakes in Oklahoma.). For that reason, I’d have had no advantage with a large lens in water that I couldn’t see 5 feet into, or sometimes my hand at full extension. I imagine almost all OWS venues and IM venues, save Kona or St Croix, are similar.
I also spoke to the head position issue by stating that OW is dynamic: always changing and causing head position changes anyway (sighting, drafting, current, chop, flying elbows). I’ve definitely tried the Arena Swedix, and I didn’t get any benefit in OWS, bc I was still sighting forward or when I breathed, or trying to avoid kicks. Being able to sight forward in these goggles might (or might not) save a few degrees of neck flexion in a setting where there is already so much movement. What I did get benefit from this morning, in my 4000m training swim in murky lake water was following the “rock line,” that line where the sun penetrates to the point where it can’t be seen, in this case, a sloping rock bottom about 5-6 feetdeep. I swam nearly 800 of my total in a straight line just by looking at this line, and maybe looked up 3 times. Of course, I was also looking at the trees and dam with every breath, and seeing those just fine in my Tyr Eclipse.
In a race I won for the 5th consecutive time this past May (actually, 3 OA wins and 2 masters wins, when I was beaten by pool Olympic Trials and Sectional swimmers 27 years younger than me), I “herded” a swimmer to my right in an anti-clockwise race. In so doing, I just stayed near the center and breathed to my right while looking at her yellow cap, therefore letting her navigate. All I had to do was get my right Hind Compy-clone goggle lens (the old kind with a neoprene gasket and single latex strap, $4) out when I breathed and eyeball that cap, for each leg of the race, 1km out 1km back x 2, 4K total. Full disclosure: she beat me by about 7 seconds overall, but she’s 16 and swims 50k per week, and I’m lucky to get 17k.