Until fairly recently, I was not familiar with all the details swimming the English Channel entailed, besides that it's a really long and probably cold swim. It is a swim rich in tradition, including what a challenger could wear while trying to complete the swim. One of the rules is that you cannot wear a wetsuit. You cannot wear anything that helps with buoyancy or reduces drag by anything but negligible amounts (textile materials, not over shoulder or below the knees.)
I have the Huntington Beach Pier Swim coming up this Saturday, and it is not wetsuit legal. Up until last Thursday I did not have experience swimming in the ocean with no wetsuit on. Frolic around the waves, sure, but legit swim, no. Since last Thursday the weather was so nice (76 degrees Fahrenheit, yeah!) and I know it was going to be a group swim, I decided to try it out.
Right away I noticed it was a little bit harder staying afloat, either while waiting at a buoy or trying to fix your goggles with both hands. I also seem to be going a lot slower, and every cold patch of water was harder on the body, but not unbearable. When I checked the data on my watch, sure enough, I was swimming pretty poorly compared by my previous training sessions. I chalked this to being out of shape from lack of swim practice for about a week. Today I tried again to swim "channel legal", and I was having difficulties with my goggles (I found out later that the strap was slightly ripped and I positioned it poorly) and I had to abandon the second half of my swim since I was going very slow due to the goggles and it was nearly impossible for me to tread water hard enough with just my legs to properly fix them. This was enormously discouraging. I got out of the water and just shivered all the way until I got to the sporting goods store.
I don't seem to be getting any better as of late in the swim, and I really can't seem to figure out what I'm doing wrong. Maybe my technique is all wrong, I'm just not going hard enough, or I'm still out of shape? I thought I would at least see some weekly progress considering how slow I'm going right now O_O It was a lot easier to see what was the matter when I run. I can check myself in the mirror, it's obvious to me when I'm going a good pace for my distance, and I know if I'm under trained. With swimming, it's all still a mystery.
Having recently spent all of my sporting budget on a new roadbike for the triathlon, I'm all out of money to hire a trainer for swimming. I'll stick it out for at least another month and then see if I need to hire a professional coach to analyze what is the matter with my swim.
Hoping I will do okay at the Huntington Beach Pier Swim this weekend! Surely I'll be the last one to finish my race, but it should be fun anyway! It's been awhile since I've taken on my foe, the Huntington Beach Pier! X3
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