Many triathletes experience a type of anxiety when it comes to open water swimming. For some this is a fear of being in a big body of water where you can’t see the bottom and the fear of the unknown things and creatures that may be in there with them. For others it’s having other people around them kicking and affecting their breathing rhythms when it comes to group workouts and races. And for others it comes from wearing a wetsuit and the feeling of compression around the breathing muscles in the chest and neck. Sometimes this anxiety gets so big that it makes completing a race that one has put months and months (if not years!) of training time into impossible. This morning I had a conversation with one of our CLPT athletes about this very thing – and some ideas on how to conquer at least a portion of these fears before race day. This particular athlete is participating in her first Ironman this season and is fit and ready to do it with the one potential limitation being an anxiety swimming in open water. Here are some points from our conversation that may help YOU if you are reading this and experiencing some similar feelings and reactions.
- She is fit enough to swim 3800m without issue and well within the cut off time. That should not be causing nervousness lurking in the back of her mind. I told her to be confident of that and to focus on breaking through some of the barriers that have been created for her to succeed and feel comfortable in the open water.
- Practice = being familiar with a situation = increased comfort with it. I asked her to do at least 50% of her scheduled swims in open water, performing the workout as close to as prescribed as possible, counting stroke count instead of meters swam in order to count the intervals. This will not only give her more experience in her wetsuit and in the lake but will also get her moving at various heart rates. On race day it is likely that her heart rate will be elevated simply because of the fact that an Ironman is standing in front of her – and so feeling okay, comfortable and familiar with an elevated heart rate and breathing rate in the water will be important.
- Practice in the wetsuit will make that tight feeling in the chest and shoulders something that she has experienced many times and feels more comfortable with as a result. It won’t be new and strange and as anxiety provoking. This will also end up with practice putting on the wetsuit and realizing how high to pull it up and how it should feel around the neck and shoulders when it is on properly and comfortably.
- Get into some open water group swims of various kinds. Practice with the smaller group in the city that swims near her to get a bit more experience with people around. And then practice with a bigger group of people be it in an open water swim race or a large group that practices a little further away. Again, practicing the things that cause some of the anxiety she experiences will make it more familiar and make her more comfortable.
- Visualize the race situation. No matter how much practice happens going back and forth at Cherry Beach or around the lake at Gulliver’s Lake, on race day there will be a 3800m single loop course that looks HUGE. Visualize looking at this and saying “I got this”. Go through some potential feelings and reactions to this and be ready and prepared with some responses to get through it.
These points may not help everyone out there who has trouble with open water swimming. However, it may help some and so we just wanted to share some of the ideas that we went through this morning in case it makes your race day better and helps to make it a success!
