I did my first tri last month, and despite being very nervous, I did OK. (5430 Sprint)In fact I was feeling pretty good about my upcoming HIM. Then Today…
I did another open water swim tonight of 750M (Stroke and Stride Race), I guess I got cocky went out too fast, had to rest for a minute on a jet ski (how embarrassing)
So, I have done two 750M open water swims. I have a 70.3 in August. I routinely do Hour long sessions with my masters group, but that includes rest between sets. I am scared about the difference of the longer swim. I don’t get tired as much as mentally “bored” or panicky, I guess.
Any advice for a nervous swimmer?
I also have two questions.
Question one:
Have any of you had to rest during a Tri swim? and if so, ever had to rest more than once during one event?
Question Two:
Have you ever heard of planning rest at the Buoys during a race?
I know the good swimmers are gonna blast me, but oh well.
David.
If you are doing 60min longmasters pratices and they are structured halfway decent, you should be covering more then 2km per workout.
Go swim a straight 2000 in the pool then no worries.
Having rests allows you to swim at higher velocities then if you tried to swim straight.
I won’t blast - did that last week on this subject and offended someone and that’s not why I’m here. Swimming in pools is not the same as swimming OW. You have to get out there and do it and learn how to sight, how to go in a straight line, read the water, know when to breath in chop, what goggles to wear for what conditions, how to draft, etc. Go do it several times and you should be fine. I really do understand what people go through when doing OW the first several times. I was severely injured and learned how to swim because I refused to water run and my first OW event was the swimmer on a relay team at Alcatraz. My first lake swim 3 months before unnerved the Hell out of me and by the time I got in SF Bay I probably had more than 20 hours of OW experience and a lot of that was in rough lake chop before weather fronts moved through. There is only one way to get over inexperience - go swim OW.
Question 1: No. Question 2: No. But if you are going to rest, find a kayak to hold onto - not a buoy. You will get trampled or hung up on the guide wire at the buoy and we will never see you again. Best.
I could barely swim a 25y with about 3 months to go before my first half-IM swim. The longest I ever worked up to in the pool was 1000y. While I was very slow in my race (44 mins), it really wasn’t a big deal. Just boring.
If you can do 1000y and just be bored rather than exhausted, you should be fine. I’ve improved a lot since then, but nowhere near enough! (see my b*tching in other threads).
There is no need to worry, Irishsailsman. If you’ve been regularly doing over 2k with your master’s crew, you’ll be fine in the race.
Don’t worry about the distance itself: you train in smaller blocks of reps to maintain your technique, and to rest more so you can train at a pace harder than your race pace and/or for longer. Don’t bother with long reps (over 400m), these will just allow your technique to deteriorate and will make your swimming slower.
Concentrate on being able to relax in the OW. Swim there often and focus on OW specific skills: sighting, drafting, starts etc. Learn to relax in the water. Learn to overcome small things that can put you off: eg cold hands & feet, swallowing water due to chop, people hitting you. These may happen on race day but they are really minor things as long as you continue to swim at your own steady pace.
I would suggest being conservative on the swim, and only pick up the pace (if you want) in the 2nd half of the swim. A HIM is a long event, there’s no advantage for an average swimmer in speeding off at the start.
Keep training and remember that OW swimming is more about the mental than the physical.
If you’ve covering a decent distance with your masters group, you’re going to be fine. But from a mental aspect, you need to take carve out some training time and swim the distance all the way through plus about 200 yards to prove to yourself that you can do it.
As others have said, the buoys are a bad place to rest because you’re blocking the path of others and are going to get run over there.
I agree with CooterBob. You need to get out into OW as much as you can a couple of weeks before your race. You need to mimic the race conditions as much as possible in your training. Pool swim is nothing like OW swim. I mean, you wouldn’t train for a marathon on just a treadmill, right? If you consider yourself a beginning swimmer, try to stay in the back of the swim start. There’s no need to get elbows and feet in your face. You want to conserve as much energy as possible for the bike and the run. Start off slow and try to get into your rhythm. Half IM is a long race. Pace yourself. Chances are you’ll catch to those over zealous guys on the bike or the run anyway.
OK - this isn’t a total hijack - but there are a couple of people on this thread whose advice seems sound and maybe they can help on a related problem.
I am a decent, though not blistering fast swimmer - usually top quater to third in the swim depending on how competetive a field shows up. Distance is no issue. However, with the exception of one TT style start race - no matter what - about 200m out I really start to feel a panic attack (short breathing, constriction if in a wetsuit etc, a general feeling of clautrophobia) - and need to pull up and out of the line for about 30 seconds and re-group. I have taken to seeding myself on the outside, trying to minimize contact and crowding (and frankly it is the crowding more than the contact that gets me). I generally seed myself at the front on the outside, and am not usually passed out there. Still have the same issue. It is not a pace issue - I have pretty good control over that now and am not going out too hard. And it doesn’t happen at open water parctice. Admittedly that is hard to come by now where I live, and even then we only have 8-10 people, but I always feel relaxed then. It is something about “the race”. So I watch about a third of the field go by, and then start picking my way back up. If I could control this I could be in the top 10-15%, but no luck to date.
So beyond the HTFU type advice - anybody have any tricks to get themselves through this little bridge of panic? Once I restart I am usually fine the rest of the distance, though my last race I just never found a good rhythm, but still finished well.
also, masters practice is a great place to practice drafting and finding the draft. As you close the gap to the person in front of you look through the water for the bubbles to find the feet. DO NOT lift your head. You can also practice finding spots that are slower or faster behind the person in front ie edging over to the L or RT how much harder do you have to work vs directly behind
As to your first question, in my first tri (5430 Sprint a few years ago), I held onto the dock at the turn around. I didn’t feel too bad – there were racers sitting on the thing. I have not needed to take a break during any race since then.
I would not recommend planning on taking a rest on a kayak or other object. If you’re in an absolute panic, then, sure. But, better to visualize and plan for a non-stop swim. If you hit a bad patch (mentally or physically), slow down your stroke rate for a while – glide a little longer on each stroke. Your HR will come down and that helps mentally. Otherwise, everytime you hit a bad patch you will have this mental debate about whether to stop – and you’ll waste time trying to sight for the kayaks. You don’t want to have that mental debate while you’re out there.
Keep doing the Stroke & Stride series. It will help you get comfortable out there. Do the 1500 – it won’t be very crowded by the second lap and you can just focus on being smooth and relaxed out there.
Thanks evryone.
it is good to hear from others who have been where I am. It seems, espcecailly here in Boulder, that everyone is an elite swimmer.
I did see today that I PR,d the 5k, and finished 3rd for the ace in my age group!-(i guess the good athletes were doing the 1500)
But I am still scared s%$@less of the HIM swim:)
I had a similar problem, and still do sometimes if I’m not careful. What helped me was realizing a similar thing happens when I run first thing in the morning. After a quarter mile or so I’ll get a constricted feeling in my lungs, and an urge to slow down or stop so I can catch my breath. The difference is that there is not nearly the panic effect, so I just run through it and the lungs will open up after a minute or so. By the time I’m a few minutes into the run, I’m breathing great and don’t think about it anymore.
That helped me with the swimming in two ways: 1) Mentally I know (or at least believe) that this is just a temporary feeling that will go away soon as my lungs open up; so I’m able to stay calmer; and 2) I make sure and do a little bit of warmups beforehand to try and get the lungs opened up in advance.
Good point about the running - I will try to keep that in mind.
I do do warm-ups. However, by the time they pull you out of the water (10 mins before start) and you get to my wave (45-49 - usually 4-6) - we are 20-30 minutes down from the warm-up, and I am back to resting phase. Now maybe if I could go off with the pros? HA!!
No worries about everyone in Boulder being an elite swimmer. Far from it. It won’t take long before you’re middle of the pack as a swimmer in the low key races here.
This is very common, it happens to everyone, and to some everytime they race! That is why I suggested above OW racing is more about the mental rather than the physical.
This can be caused by a few things:
Inadequate OW training - the newness of the sensations and enviroment can add to your stress. Try to swim 1x a week OW coming up to your main event(s) or race season.
Insufficient warm up. Even if you are going “long”, put your body and face under the water even if it is freezing. You will become accustomed to the temp quickly, even if you get an ice-cream headache! Try to have a proper swim, loosen up, do some sculling, backcrawl, and make sure you comfortable before starting.
Inexperience in coping with the little things mass starts throw at you. You say overcrowding is an issue? Then forgot about the other people, forget about drafting, and just concentrate on your stroke. Remember to sight, but concentrate on your comfort in the water first. Then, when you feel ok, start sighting more and looking for people to draft off, it helps!
In my last race, I was right up behind a very fast swimmer after 100m, then some guy reached to catch, grabbed me, and shoved my backwards. I thought “fckfckf*ck” and kept swimming. Then it happened again and suddenly I went from being 3rd to being 10th. But there was nothing I could do about it. I didn’t stop, I just kept swimming, trying to continue draft off those in front of me. Sh!t happens can’t change, you just have to keep swimming.
In the same race, in very cold water, I managed to swallow water twice. On the 2nd occassion, this made me panic (mentally, I was still swimming), so I rolled on my back and did backstroke for a few secs until I felt able to breathe again. Again, you just have to deal with the situation. But keep swimming.
In elite races, sometimes the guys get hit etc, and their googles come off. So what do the smart ones do? They make the bext of a bad situation: they roll on their backs, and put their googles on one-handed, but all the time they keep swimming.
Great thread, swimming can be so frustrating its nice to know other people struggle or have struggled in the past. One quick hijak, is there a proper way to site? do most people stop there strokes and look up or is it all one motion of keeping the arms moving while the head comes up?
is there a proper way to site? do most people stop there strokes and look up or is it all one motion of keeping the arms moving while the head comes up?
when I sight, it barely interrupts my stroke - so I guess my arms keep moving. I tend to look up as my right arm is forward and starting to pull down, I think.
Never stop your stroke to sight. Slows you down, and makes you a traffic hazard to the people behind you.
What works for me is to keep normal arms movements going, breathe normally, then roll/lift my head up more or less in time with my recovery arm. Face looks forward to sight, then head goes back down just as hand from recovery arm is starting the catch.
Yes, as the others said, lift up your head as little as possible, and know what and where you are sighting before you look.
Fast swimmers will only lift their heads a little, only as far as the nose, and continue to breathe on the side. It takes practise, and you must work into your stroke.
