So mid June a silly girl didn’t realize an Oly Tri is 1500 meters – frankly a long-arse way for me – so I gathered some sage advice from the gurus here at ST.
The result, I survived…albeit I am far, far, far away from breaking any speed records (finished the swim in 33:40) the fact I A, didn’t hyperventilate, B, managed to stay on course with little sighting, and C, felt good exiting to the bike made it all a success for me. (ha, all the obsession about the swim let the bike & run training fall apart, so that portion of the race was more or less a disaster)
I’d say the advice with the most impact was lessons. Taking a completely untrained 44 y/o and learning just the minimal of technique made it not as laborious as it probably would have been. Also open water swimming added the most to my confidence. I could swim thousands upon thousands of yards in a pool but when I did my warmup sprint tri of a 1/2 mile, I had that typical, jeez, where’s the wall feeling 1/2 way thru. So I got my butt to a lake and trained my brain on just how far 1500 meters is in open water.
The upshot for me is I really have no place else to go but to get better 