Lessons Learned from my First Open Water Swim

Well, it's done. My first open water swim. The Jim McDonnell 1-mile lake swim was wonderful. I managed to squeak out 7th place in my age group (out of 11) and 60th place overall out of 364 total 1-mile swimmers. I guess that's okay. I have nothing to compare it to. Oh, and I think my time was 31:15. Slower than I expected, but that's one of the lessons learned.

First off, sighting. I practiced sighting in the pool. Every few lengths I would lift my head slightly, look at something on the pool deck, turn and breathe, back to stroking. Well, that's okay, but it did not prepare me for this swim. The buoys (jpg) were so far off, I couldn't see or find them until I was practically right on them. I decided early on, perhaps after the first 100 yards, to just trust my cohorts, and follow the other yellow swim caps.

That worked for a while, but as we thinned out, it became harder. I averaged a sighting every 9-10 strokes. I got better as the swim progressed. In fact, on the last quarter of the mile, I stopped following a woman swimming next to me as she was angling away from the buoy. I straightened my swimming and think I saved some time on that last quarter. I really think if there was a GPS hooked up to me, I bet I swam 1.25 miles; not one mile.

Next, bilateral breathing. All that practice, and I didn't bilateral breathe except for perhaps 30 yards towards the end. I did get to experience the "fun" of swallowing a bunch of water as I turned to breathe. Thankfully, I know how to cough underwater without choking, so it barely slowed me down. The first time it freaked me out, I stopped for a second, realized how stupid that was, and started back to swimming. The second time I simply continued breathing and coughing underwater til my throat was clear.

Goggles. Things I read online suggested I should wear a swim cap, put the goggles on, then put another cap on over that. The idea is to prevent losing your goggles if you get whacked by someone's arm. Practically no one did this. I decided at the start to just wear the swim cap they gave us and put the goggles on over that. Goggles were no problem.

The swim brought back great memories of the 10K runs my dad would take me to when I was a teen. I loved the atmosphere, the people, the fun everyone seemed to be having. And the high after the race and yes, I'll admit it, I loved getting the t-shirts. This race was exactly the same. PLUS, they had great post-race food. Wonderful sandwiches, bananas, sodas, water, and oreo cookies. Yum.

Next up is the race I mentioned earlier in England. That one will be 1500 meters. Cannot wait!