Triathlon: Swimming Outdoors

Article written by Niki Dobbyn.

The very funny account written below is very common for those swimmers who have spent years and years training in a pool and enter their first triathlon without having spent a daytraining in open water. It's very different!!! So many obstacles can be avoided IF you take the time to 1) read this article and 2) spend some time in the open water training so that you are completely prepared for your event. Check out the tip list on the right, too!

I spent the first ten years of my swimming career in a nicely lit pool with six lanes, a long blue line painted on the floor of each lane and a T at each end. There were walls (of course), overhead flags for backstroke, swimmers swimming in the lanes with and around me and that wonderful taste of chlorine -- not that I liked drinking it, but it occasionally got in unwanted orifices like your mouth, your nose and ears. I had locker rooms, bathrooms and tiled floors to walk on.

When I was introduced to triathlons, It didn't dawn on me that the swim was going to be anything different from the pool swim until I arrived at my first tri having trained solely in a pool -- bad idea! Let me tell you why. I arrived at the triathlon at about 6 am and got everything situated, like TriathaNewbie.com suggests. I brought my wet suit down to the beach and stood there looking at the water."Hmmm, " I thought to myself. "The water looks pretty dark." I looked around a bit at the people getting ready. "Those buoys look pretty far away, too." I thought, squinting at the triangular flotation devices far far away on what looked like the horizon. "Those must be the out of bounds buoys". I shrugged.

I walked over to the water and stepped up to my ankles. "Holy crap! It's cold" O.K. I think I might have said something a bit more colorful at the time. The guy next to me smiled with that knowing "you must have trained in a pool" smile and I told him this was my first triathlon so he didn't think I was a total idiot. But he didn't. Apparently, there were newbies starting triathlons all the time and today just happened to be my day. He brought me over to his group that included his sister and two friends. They watched me in hysterics as I tried to put on my shortie wet suit in the sand. I had sand all up in my wet suit from my feet being sandy and wet -- big mistake! Then his sister explained that the place to put on the wet suit on is in the parking lot where there is little risk of sand irritating those parts we don't like to talk about. O.K. I learned that lesson the hard way. For some reason, I was pretty sure, I had a few more coming.

I had the wet suit on, I had the bathing cap on and I was just standing there with the group looking at the water waiting for the event to begin when it dawned on me: Are sharks gonna eat me? "Holy crap! Are Sharks gonna eat me? Are there sharks out there? The water is pretty freekin' dark ya know!" (again, more colorful at the time) Why didn't I think about this before?" I actually started seriously panicking about it and all the hairs on my body began to stand up on their ends. The cool guy I met at the water edge said, still staring at the water mentally preparing for his race, "Relax and see if you can follow me on this...There are about 500 swimmers preparing to swim this course. Our heat is roughly in the middle, which means that almost 500 swimmers will be in the water at the same time. IF there's a shark AND he decides to eat you, out of the 500 other snacks, I'm gonna have to believe that it is just your time."

Believe or not, that made perfect sense to me and I was ok.

The starter climbed the lifeguard stand and started announcing directions through the bull horn. I stopped hearing what he was saying when I heard that the buoys weren't the "out of bound markers". They were the buoys the swimmers needed to go around to complete the course! Holy Crap! (again, a more colorful metaphor was thought). I just stared at the buoys thinking, "there's no way I'll make it out to that buoy, then over to that buoy and back to shore. There's no way the distance is a half mile!" I actually swam a mile in my pool three times a week and couldn't, for the life of me, rationalize the distance with the one laid out before me. I was literally stunned. I had to keep telling myself, "Technically, you CAN do this... you just don't know you can." I try not to lie to myself and this was the most accurate statement I could encourage myself with.

I saw my group walking towards the water and my brain shut off. It literally shut off. I remember my virgin feet stepping on rocks, shells and other things but it was very surreal. I waded out to the outside of the group because the group looked enormous. I semiconsciously calculated that I was kinda small and might break under the weight of all of those people charging at once. I heard a noise and saw bodies flying and splashing and running. I starting flailing and doing the same, only in my own lane - Where's my lane?!?! Where the hell's my lane?!?! I have to swim. So I swam like a bat outta hell as fast as I could until I was exhausted.

I stopped and looked around. I was very alone, way out over my head and in black Falmouth water. There was no one near me and the shore was far behind. l looked to the far left, saw the race continuing without me and realized I was heading to Martha's Vineyard all by myself. I had a small panic attack and a tingling sensation began to radiate all over my body. I knew this was the type of situation that divided the men from the boys (I'm a girl, but try to follow the spirit of this logic) and made the decision to pull myself together. I took a few composing breaths, put my head down and swam towards to the first buoy stopping every ten strokes to realign myself. I encountered these things called waves, which are not present in pools, got salt water up my nose and it threw my navigation off every time I looked up, but I made it to the first buoy.

Next stop, buoy number two! I spotted it, put my head down and began to swim. There were people all around this time, thank God! Luckily, swimming has always been my strongest suit and I finally remembered. I realized that swimming with my head down was a big mistake when I went to spot the buoy and instead found a pair of fluttering feet in my face. I had another expletive deletive cross my mind, stopped dead in my tracks, recouped and then started again with my b-line for the next buoy. With my head tilted at a 45-degree angle, watching the blurred underwater version of people encompassed in black swimming around me, I swam ten strokes and spotted. Swam ten strokes and spotted. The count was giving my mind a great pattern to concentrate on and as I passed other swimmers, I gained confidence. It was working like a charm until...

Yes, "until" always pops up in confident situations. Well, I swam ten strokes and spotted Fred at 2:00. For this story, let's call him Fred anyways. He was, shall we say in lifeguard terms, a distressed swimmer. He was way out over his head, literally and figuratively. He was working his butt off going nowhere and had just flipped over on his back to rest and stay alive. Fred was done. "Do I help? Awh, man!" I just got into my groove and this guy's gotta screw up my race. "Hold on Missy," I thought. "You're missing brain cells if you think your race is more important than whether or not this guy makes it back to the shore." The waterlogged angel in my brain finally popped through and I was next to Fred talking to him. Luckily, for me, he was too embarrassed to have a tiny chick like myself give him a hand and he politely waved me off. OK Florence Nightingale, back to my b-line for the second buoy. (just as an FYI, I didn't hear about any deaths after the race, and I checked the newspaper, so I think Fred floated himself to shore just fine without my help)

As I neared the second buoy I got so excited. One more turn and I'm headed home -- warm beach with sand and people and no more salt water. I got my body around it and dug in. I passed more swimmers along the way and got more and more excited as I could see things on the bottom of the ocean floor getting clearer and clearer. I could stand now, yes! "Ouch, oooh, youch, ahhh!" were my g-rated remarks as I tried to run in five feet of water towards the beach on rocks, shells and other really sharp unknown objects. Take my word, friends, SWIM as far as you can before you begin using your feet for anything else but kicking! Ever have that dream where you're running away from someone and you feel like you're running in slow motion or in jelly? Well, my exhaust from running in water almost left me at the water's edge. I was seeing dots when I was running up the beach so badly that I couldn't find my wetsuit pull string-thingy and started whacking myself on the back like I'd just been bitten by a swam if bees trying to locate it. I was so trapped in it for what seemed like forever that it took me a long time to realize that there were a million people standing around doing nothing and one just might be able to help me! And one lucky fan did. With a heartfelt, "Thanks", I was off to the second leg where I was sure to learn more lessons in triathlon biking!