
Originally Posted by
mjtyson
If I had 24/7 access to open water, I'd swim entirely in OW.
But I don't. Theoretically, pre-COVID, yes, I guess I do, but a) I'm not yet acclimated to very cold (sub-50F for me) water and b) access on work days is troublesome.
I have been in situations where I'd had no access at all. Two years in Kyrgyzstan the only time I swam in open water was when I attempted (2015) and succeeded (2016) in my crossing. Not only that, the pool I had was about 20 feet long, so it was two years of swimming on tethers.
But if I could swim OW all the time, I'd do it. Most of my OW sessions are divvied up like this: warm up of 5-10 minutes; series of "intervals" like Kari mentioned above. I really like doing 100 fast, 100 pace, 90 fast, 90 pace...10/10, then back up. Nice cool down of 5-10 minutes. Intermingled in these swims I'll throw in lots of sighting. And if there's lots of waves, I'll change directions a lot to practice breathing into and out of waves.
Now, all this is to say: I've never been one who needed to worry about being in the running for top finishes. If I were that fast, I would for sure do a lot of pool training, too. Pre-COVID and for reasons I stated above, I did lots of pool training, and most of that was pace training and intervals.
But seriously, I'd swim OW 100% of the time if I could.
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