Subject: RE: Frequent Open water swimming Just did my first OWS of the season yesterday. I'll say this: treading water between reps is nothing like resting at the wall.
I've got a race next weekend (first open-water tri of the season for me ) so I wanted to work on 4 things:
1 ) swimming in the wetsuit
2 ) sighting
3 ) turning
4 ) getting out of the suit
Everything went fine, and I don't really feel the need to do OWS other than a tune-up right before a race. Swimming hard/fast and therefore building swim fitness/speed is just so much more doable in the pool. I could see adding in OWS sessions, but I'd never swap out a pool session for open water.
Having said that, if I was doing IM I could see wanting to practice swimming continuously for 1 hour + at a time, so probably would work in a few of those sessions as I approached my race. As a short course-focused dude with limited training time, however, I'd rather maximize my bang-for-the-buck in the pool. |