Know thy Enemy

According to The Art of War, by Sun Tzu

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not your enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

This is how I approached my open water swim at Jordan Lake yesterday…

You can’t tell by looking at that surface of the water (see picture), but the conditions were a little choppy. Just enough to make it a challenge to swim! This is my favorite type of swim workout…it’s just alot of fun, and great training for races, too. I am always hoping for a choppy swim at my races, because it is one of my strengths. 🙂

I did three laps of the cove nonstop, about 2100 yards. The first lap was pretty easy. The current was stronger on the way out so the way back I was swimming faster!

Then the wind picked up and created some waves and a stronger current. On the way out for lap 2, the waves were coming from my left and pushing me toward the shoreline, so I had to work on pulling harder with my left arm to stay on course. I sometimes also would give an extra flick in the water with my right hand toward the shore in the final follow-thru of my stroke, to give my body a little push back in the right direction.

On the third lap, the waves were even bigger and seemed to be coming straight at me. If I stopped to tread water, they didn’t look like big waves. But they felt big while swimming through them! When the waves are coming toward me, I like to push my head lower in the water to drive my body underneath them. I also slow down the cadence of my stroke, almost as if doing a DPS (distance per stroke) drill. This reduces my need for oxygen, so I only need to breathe every four strokes,thus allowing me to keep my head underneath the waves longer. Even though I am swimming a bit slower, I feel as if this is the fastest way to get through the waves, because I am swimming straighter and am not wasting energy fighting the waves.

On the way back from the third lap, I was swimming with the waves coming from behind. This sounds like it should be easy, right? Wrong! The waves made it hard to breathe, and interrupted my swim stroke. I experimented with different things, trying to work with the waves, rather than fight against them. I found that carrying my head a little higher helped my body get pushed along by the waves a little easier. A little bit like a body surfing effect. As I swam, I tried to sense the waves with my body and time my stroke accordingly. I tried to breathe while I was in the trough of a wave, to avoid getting a mounthful of water. And I tried to time my stroke so that I was driving my leading arm into the water as the wave crested over my head, to use the power of the wave with the power of my stroke. I got into a really good groove, completely in synch with the waves. At times, I would get out of synch, so just paused my stroke a bit until I could get back into it. It was great fun.

So, now you know my top secret swim tip. Get lots of open water swim training! That way you will know your enemy!