OWS, Lessons learned!

I have taught adult learn to swim for many years and consider myself very good at what I do and extremely comfortable in the water. I do the majority of my swimming in pools and was not even remotely worried about the OWS from last weekend's Tri. Boy was I in for a surprise! The wind picked up all through the morning right into the start of the race and by the time I entered the water there was a fair amount of chop. My first leg was swimming into the chop and no issue. The second and longest leg was swimming at a approximately 45 degree angle to the chop. I no sooner made the turn when I realized I was in for a treat. The chop wasn't bad per se, but it was just enough that I was inhaling as much water as air. I would get a clean breath about every 3-4 breaths. It didn't take long before my mental game was shot and I finished the swim off using sidestroke...

There were a couple of lessons to be learned for me: 1) Openwater swimming can be vastly different than swimming laps in the pool. 2) I had the option to practice OWS before the event and failed to take advantage. Had I done this I would have been more mentally prepared and I believe the effect would have been largely negated. 3) Be comfortable swimming a variety of strokes to include the sidestroke (I got this one right ). My time was down from what it should have been but it was still a respectable time. I attribute this to swimming regularly and swimming a variety of strokes to include breaststroke, sidestroke and the front crawl. This flexibility and familairity saved the day for me. My girl friend and I have now added a weekly OWS to our training regimen so that we can be best prepared for less than ideal conditions in the OWS.

Feel free to share your OWS lessons learned