She is dropping her left elbow and lifting her head too far out of the water to breathe. Not very efficient! Now she is going to pay the price!
if it is in fact dangerous, i don’t view it as enough of a potential issue not to do it. i always swim alone in open water, just due to a lack of training partners with similar schedules. i bike alone most of the time as well
I swim alone in a Lake frequently. I worry more about make believe monsters than anything else.
I used to be a life guard and have good rescue skills. However, me and my buddies frequently talk about how if one of us drowned while we were swimming in a group, most of us would never know it. “Hey, what happened to _______?” If you are behind me and get attacked and eaten by an imaginary monster, I would never know it. If you cramp and quietly slip under the surface, I almost certainly may not ever notice it. If you were in front of me, I would just think I was passing you and I would speed up to try and keep you from drafting.
If you really want to be safe, only swim where there is a professional lifeguard watching. Sadly, there are not many of them around most open water areas.
The lifeguard at a pool (not named here) I was swimming in last week was reading a BOOK! So I guess you arent even safe there. The only true answer to my original question is… DUATHLON!
I swim in open water every other day, up to 2 miles a session, by myself! I swim off my neighbors pier in a small lake (SO WI), the only thing I look for is snapping turtles! Next week I am swimming 8miles for charity but I will have a kayak and police boat as an escort. I swim alone because it is my only option, I feel very safe when I do it, but I am only a a few yards from the piers so if I do cramp I can grab the pier or in some locations touch bottom.
Very coincidentally, I just got back from 10 days at a lake. I made this thing about halfway through the trip. The lake is fairly busy (esp on weekends) so I figured this thing might increase my visibility. I replaced this Walmart bike flag with a larger flag that indicates “swimmer in the water” which hopefully most boaters around here recognize since it’s a law for boaters to display them when they have a skier/tuber in the water. I tied this thing to my RoadID anklet with a cord that I could easily break in emergency situation. I was pulling it about 5 feet behind me.
Additional benefits are that I could strap my GPS dealy onto it so I could later see how far I had swum, and I can laugh at how serpentine I swim. Also, I figure if I get into some physical trouble, I can hang onto the noodle things to keep me afloat.
While on the maiden voyage with this contraption, I still ran head-first into a log the size of my thigh. If I had been knocked unconscious, at least they’d have an easy time finding my body with this thing floating on the surface.
I made this thing …
A dimpled flag and pole would give you better aerodynamics!
why not strap on of these to your leg? Slightly more visibility and a flotation device if needed. Can think that it would make much drag.