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#1
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![]() Yesterday morning I swam my first open water race and TI delivered in a big way by helping me conserve energy and feel confident. My goal wasn’t to race as much as it was to finish comfortably. I wanted to love my first open water race and to finish confidently so that I continue to participate in open water swimming. Water temperature was a comfortable 77F and I didn’t use (nor do I own) a wetsuit. I placed 4th in my age group that had 9 swimmers and finished the 1.2 mile “race” in 46:29. In a 25-yard pool I typically swim a mile (i.e.1750 yards) in about 35 minutes.
Things that I learned:
My next step is to do the swim leg (1500m) of a local triathlon in early September. My neighbor is a runner that has always wanted to participate in a triathlon and he has a friend who bikes. Neither likes to swim, so I’m thinking about being the water guy. Thanks TI for making all this possible! Tim |
#2
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![]() Hi Tim, I think your performance sounds great. A couple of weeks ago I did a 1500m in the pool in 34:27, not racing, just trying to do it. Now in the lake I have been really struggling to swim anything over 200m or so. So your brief acclimatization in the lake and your time in a shoal of others sounds excellent.
FWIW for myself, I think the almost permanent darkness caused by the murky water combined with the potential endlessness of it all, has a psychological impact on me. So today I used a TT. I set it to a leisurely 1.40, and found it really helped a lot. It gave the equivalent of the pool end. I could focus on the beat and do "just another beat" sort of a thing. That ansd my Garmin set to alarm at 50m intervals distracted me enough so that things began to settle down. I found I was swimming 400m and 500m intervals, separated by floating rests, in quite a relaxed way. Still nothing like your 1.2 mile but still a vast improvement - I enjoyed it (despite nearly getting run over by a power boat!).
__________________
A psychological disorder is: "Any personal construction which is used repeatedly in spite of consistent invalidation." ~ George Kelly "The water is your friend.....you don't have to fight with water, just share the same spirit as the water, and it will help you move." ~ Aleksandr Popov |
#3
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![]() Talvi,
Sounds like you are making great progress adjusting to the murkiness of the water. If you can do relaxed 400-500m segments, it’s a short hop to much longer distances. But you bring up the all-important psychological side of swimming. I’ve experience a couple psychological impacts on my swimming over the last year. Being a relatively new convert to TI (working on it for a little over 1 year now), I could swim a continuous mile with my thrash-and-dash style, but when I switched over to whole-stroke TI, I found that I couldn’t swim more than a few laps without going into major oxygen-debt. With some advice from TI-ers Werner and Ananth to slow down and relax, I was able to quickly get back to a continuous mile. That ability apparently was always there, but my technique was holding me back and I had gotten into a mental rut that I couldn’t do it. By relaxing and trusting the TI approach I was able to breathe appropriately and extend my distance accordingly. Another example is fairly minor but instructive. My open water race was supposed to be held in a fairly deep reservoir, but due to heavy Spring rains the water depth and the potential for debris caused the venue to be moved to a much shallower lake. The reservoir was about 860 feet deep, whereas the new venue was a maximum of 21 feet deep with an average depth of only 8 feet. Even though I knew mentally that a swimmer only uses the top 1 or 2 feet of water regardless of the water depth, it was more concerning to me to swim in the reservoir than the shallower lake. A friend of mine tried to cheer me up by saying, “The only major difference would be that it would take them longer to recover your body in the reservoir than the shallow lake”. So much for the encouragement! Your use of the Tempo Trainer sounds like a great approach. It helped me a great deal to simply focus on a single stroke, then the next stroke, etc. – kind of like focusing on the next step during a running race. I can tell you are on the verge of a break-through. Keep us informed. Tim |
#4
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![]() Quote:
Thanks for your encouragement. Yesterday did feel special.
__________________
A psychological disorder is: "Any personal construction which is used repeatedly in spite of consistent invalidation." ~ George Kelly "The water is your friend.....you don't have to fight with water, just share the same spirit as the water, and it will help you move." ~ Aleksandr Popov |
#5
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![]() I'm so excited to do my first channel swim but so so nervous. I have been collecting tips while preparing for it. One of my favourites is bit.ly/1lOHMdp which has give me goals to set on. I would appreciate any tips or advice for a first channel swim please
![]() Thanks! |
#6
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![]() I think its great performance buddy, keep it up.
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