I’m no triathlete, but i am a serious roadie, and a semi-serious swimmer. However, until the past weekend, i’d hardly ever done any open water swims. This was a fairly chilly lake, and i wasn’t wearing a wetsuit - i started my swim with a disturbing amount of hyperventilation - couldn’t catch my breath, i was weezing after about 25 metres - it was all around a bad swim. Keep in mind, this was not a race, this was just me going for a swim, so nerves certainly weren’t a factor. after about 5 minutes of this, it stopped and my swimming went fine.
I think it is a fairly natural reaction. Try turning off the hot water next time you are in the shower, once just the cold water hits, you will likely start to hyperventilate.
I have experienced it in races, OW swimming, and while scubadiving. The latter is the worst because an isotherm can exist at pretty any depth and there is obviously no pulling your head out of the water while diving.
When races are going to have a cold swim I try to spend as much time in the water beforehand as possible. This is not always an option, case in point - Ralph’s 1/2. Only the pro’s get a few minutes in the water near the swim start for warm-up, but the ocean side is only a short walk away.
If you can get that five minutes to acclimate before the race start you should only have to deal with nerves and the hyperventilating THEY can cause.
Perhpas someone can give a more scientific or medical reason for this condition.
It happened to me about 2 minutes into a race in early June in Canada. 58-59 degree water, which I consider chilly. I had on a wetsuit. It’s psychological: a mental thing. I also had a very bad cold a week before and an excess of snot, so exhaling was especially difficult. I had the ability to be top 20 out of the water but did so much breaststroke and whatnot I was about 50th; 3-4 min. off my goal time. I struggled for 5 minutes, got pissed at myself, sucked it up, got over it and finally was able to put my head down and swim … I felt like such a wuss. All these much slower swimmers flipping and flopping by me … It hasn’t happened since. -TB
It’s called the dive reflex, and it’s physiological as well as partly mental.
I heard once that exhaling really forcefully the first couple of times your face hits the water helps alot. I just basically yell (cuss words) underwater and it has worked ok.
That happened to me at ~75’ of a 140’ dive of The Blue Hole, and man did it suck! Hyperventilating started and was breathing extremely shallow and in a rapid fashion.
I had to calm myself down and remind myself that I was breathing. I closed my eyes and exhaled and hard as I could twice and that got me taking deeper breaths. I had pretty much stayed at that depth while all this was going on and once I was breathing ok I started my descent again.
It lasted all of 2 - 3 minutes, but felt like a lifetime. As an aside, The Blue Hole was an awesome dive, though not sure that I would ever have the juevos to do it again. 140’ is down there and I watched my dive buddy and another succumb to nitrogen narcosis on that particular dive.
