Triathlon swimming made easy (30 page)

The Start

If you have limited open-water racing experience or feel even moderate anxiety about it, you'll be far more comfortable starting off to one side. As much open-water experience as I have, if the start is crowded, I look for open space. If there's a sweep or current, I start upsweep of the pack. On Long Island, the ocean sweep runs east to west, so I start toward the eastern edge of the group. The sweep will carry me toward the first buoy while I swim out fairly straight.

Still feeling jittery and unsure as you stand there? Nervous excitement is only natural, but just take a good look around. Note the lifeguards clustered offshore waiting for you. They'll take good care of you, help keep you on course, and be at your side quickly if you need them. Then survey your fellow athletes; they'll be out there all around you, and the ones you're most likely to be swimming with probably match up with you pretty well. And they're all feeling the same jitters. Besides, after following the program in this book, you're better prepared than most. Finally, look inward: YOU
'RE Fishlike; you've prepared thoroughly and all you need do now is swim as you've practiced.

Unless the course is 400 meters or less, the race won't be decided in the first 100 meters. If it's at least one kilometer, you can take your time finding a comfortable pace. How comfortably you swim will hugely influence how you feel on the bike and run, and the first 100 to 200 meters will largely determine your comfort in the swim. If you have more racing experience and a fairly developed stroke, you can start with 40 to 80 fairly brisk strokes. Don't sight or look. Just follow all those bodies ahead of you.

In the first 200 meters, let yourself be carried by the energy of the pack; use your arms to carve out a space amongst the thrashing arms and legs. The tightest swarm of bodies is the knot trying to round the first buoy. Swim about five yards outside to avoid them, take a good look at
where everyone is heading, and then fall in behind them at the pace and rhythm you'll maintain most of the race. If somehow your goggles get kicked off, roll to your back and kick easily while adjusting them.

One more thing about starts: In water temperatures in the 60s or lower, it's common to experience a gasp reflex during the first few strokes. The water literally takes your breath away. Even top athletes aren't immune. If you feel yourself gasping, just slow down. Do a few strokes of breaststroke or turn onto your back. But don't stop entirely. Movement helps; just take slower strokes until you feel normal breathing return.

Navigating and Drafting

During the first quarter of the race you'll probably see quite a few caps ahead of you. No worries; that just gives you more
of a guide for navigating. Aim for the middle of the cluster. And each time you look up, don't be surprised if there are fewer caps out there. This usually happens without your having to pursue them. Just keep moving steadily and people will come back to you as they fatigue.

You'll find it far easier to maintain balance and flow if you try to swim 25 yards (20 strokes) without looking up. As your confidence and form improve, you can extend this to 50 or more strokes. When you do look, keep your weight shifted forward to minimize drag and maintain balance. Your wetsuit helps too. Before looking, try to picture what you should see when you look, and this doesn't mean just buoys or caps. Use the angle of the sun, piers, buildings or trees on shore, lifeguards on their rescue boards, boats at anchor.

To save even more energy, follow others closely and let
them
sight for you. If there is an occasion to draft, take it, either feeling for the bubbles from someone's kick or looking at their legs alongside as you breathe. If you're comfortable and not feeling
way
too slow, just stay there so long as the occasion remains, contemplating happily how the folks in front are reducing drag and saving you energy. Move cunningly from one drafting opportunity to another, like a trout heading upstream, resting for a bit behind one rock before swimming to the next rock. Between drafti
ng opportunities, focus on minimizing drag by slipping through the smallest space in the water, and on keeping a steady core rhythm, your arms connected to your core.

If, for some reason, you feel any discomfort out there, mental or physical, or feel your heart rate rising, try any of the following: Begin counting strokes to occupy your mind. Focus on an SSP to put flow in your stroke. Roll to your Sweet Spot, kicking easily for a bit, and regroup. Being in Sweet Spot, particularly with a wetsuit, should be very relaxing. Remember, Sweet Spot is your 'Vail" any time you need one, in open water.

Finishing

Unless there's a clear turnaround that tells you the race is half over, you'll usually have only a vague idea how much of the race is complete. Unlike in a pool race in which the lap counter constantly alerts you how far you've gone and how much remains, in open water you can lose your sense of time and distance. You'll need to be more cautious in your pacing than you would be with distance markers. Try to increase your pace by tiny amounts as the race goes along (regular Speedplay practice will give you an internal "speedometer"), but never increase your pace or intensity unless you're certai
n you can sustain it and build on it through the end of the race. And
don't give a thought
to picking up the pace if you are in a triathlon and must bike and run after you reach shore. Just stay smooth and happily reflect on how fresh you'll feel when you
mount your bicycle.

When you finish the swim, don't rush to the transition area. I watched Mark Allen walk up the ramp at the swim finish of the Hawaiian Ironman in almost a leisurely fashion — thinking, no doubt, that another 7 hours of hard racing remained — as others around him scrambled hurriedly out of the water. He went on to win easily. So, at best, jog calmly
from the beach to the transition area, unzipping and peeling your wetsuit to the waist as you go. Since I've worn a wetsuit only once — and removed it laboriously — my best advice is to practice taking yours off to work out the easiest way to shed your neoprene skin. Once you reach your bike, start re-hydrating immediately, since you've not been able to drink while swimming.

At this point, my work is done, but yours is just beginning. Now the real race starts. Enjoy it; you should have all the energy you need to give it your best.

Afterword

Now Take Your Swimming to Unexpected Places

My daughter Cari plays Ultimate Frisbee at Wesleyan University. I went last weekend to watch her play in a tournament. It looked like exhilarating fun, but later she mentioned that she'd never touched the disk during the game. Because, like me, she's not a born athlete, and frisbee is often a coed game, most of the other players were faster, stronger or able to jump higher. Cari wistfully related the thrill of watching a player from another school race from one side of the end zone to the other, dive headlong, somersault and
then
snatch the disk inches from the turf for a one-of-a-kind, acrob
atic score. "I know I'll never be a human highlight film," she said "but I still think I can become a good player and I think the way to do that is to work on my throwing."

Smart thinking. She'd pinpointed a key part of the game that doesn't require special physical talents, but will accede to patient, diligent practice. If she is simply willing to spend hours mastering the countless ways one can artfully snap one's wrist to deliver a disk to the precise spot a streaking teammate will be at a particular moment in time — while also learning to
read
an unfolding play to anticipate opportunities — she could become a masterful playmaker. And as she does, she may experience exquisite satisfaction — not just because frisbee-tossing is fun, but from the satisfaction of
seeing her ability to make the disk do what she wishes steadily increase. But most of all, she has a good chance to achieve the blissful state created by having mind and body fully engaged in mastering a challenging skill.

Having completed the basic aim of this book: to provide practical tools to help you swim better in a triathlon or open-water — I now invite you to go one step further and experience what has been the most satisfying and instructive aspect of swimming for me — that it is almost ideally suited to revealing the pleasures of the pursuit of Mastery.

What is Mastery?

Mastery is the intriguing process during which what was once difficult becomes progressively easier and more pleasurable through practice. Whenever we witness some form of memorably high-level performance-whether it's Isaac Stern on the violin, an acrobatic frisbee player, or Ian Thorpe in the pool — we instinctively assume that mastery requires some sort of inborn genius. But mastery is not just for the fortunate few;
anyone
who pursues a personally-challenging goal — no matter how modest their starting point — can experience its rewards

Swimming is a uniquely fitting medium for cultivating the habits of mastery because it is the antithesis of a genetically programmed activity. When we do it instinctively, by and large, we do it very poorly. Yet, while human DNA may not be ideal for swimming, it
is
encoded to learn prodigiously from birth to death. And it is the mastery of skills for which we are not genetically programmed that differentiate us from all other creatures.

Swimming mastery is not about swimming 100 meters under a minute or a 2.4-mile Ironman swim leg under an hour; it's not even really about achieving some level of stroke efficiency. It's about uniting mind and body, without distraction and boredom, in patient, focused, almost loving, practice. Practice of this sort can teach you how to learn and perform in almost anything.

The first of these lessons is the value of long-term dedication to the journey itself. If there is any sure route to personal fulfillment, it is in valuing the patient journey toward mastery over the desire for quick and easy results. Cultivate modest expectations along the way and every time you reach a benchmark or breakthrough, enjoy it, then keep practicing, hoping you will always have some further plateau to aim for.

Learning to love routine

An essential insight for achieving mastery is that learning any challenging skill involves brief spurts forward, followed by a much longer plateau slightly higher than the previous one. To pursue Mastery, you must embrace the idea of spending most of your time on a plateau, continuing to practice enthusiastically even when you seem to be stagnating. Those occasional upward surges are not the only time progress is occurring. On an invisible, cellular level, learning and adaptation are constant, so long as you are giving your body tasks that require deep concentration to complete.

And you keep yourself on the path toward mastery by practicing primarily
for the sake of practice itself.
Rather than becoming frustrated by your seeming lack of progress, learn to appreciate your daily practice routine, just as much as you are thrilled by the periodic breakthrough. Just as Zen practice does, your swimming practice can bring peace and serenity by filling the space usually occupied by the problems and distractions of your external life.

Every time I enter a pool, I immediately enter a blissful sense of wellbeing, because it's proven to be one of the few areas of life in which I can consistently do just what I want. That sense of peace allows me to luxuriate in incremental progress. At the end of every year I know I'm swimming better than the year before, stroke counts slightly lower, fluency slightly greater. And perhaps once a year I get an electrifying moment of clarity or insight. But the routine between those moments is never boring because I feel I am never more fully myself than when working on mastery. The pleasure I ha
ve gained from swimming this way has led me to other activities — rowing, yoga, cross-country skiing — that offer similar opportunities for incremental improvement through mindful practice. Together they provide an encouraging sense that, even at age 50, I'm getting steadily better as an athlete.

The
Tao
of Practice

Just before the 2000 Olympics, I read an illuminating profile of Marion Jones, who was on her way to gold medals in sprints and hurdles. I can't recall the writer's name, but I took these notes: "She was endowed with the neurological on-off switches to take 47 steps in less than 11 seconds
with no loss of power (the average person can take about 35)...Grueling conditioning helps. So does obsessive attention to the smallest details. Running 100 meters is a violent act, beginning with a gunshot. At the same time, the training involved is analogous to a concert pianist's mastering Chopin; both are performances that require ferocious concentration and a fanatical regimen that reduces learned muscular actions to nearly automatic responses.... She trains with punctilious precision, systematically solving tiny biomechanical problems that keep her from running fractiona
lly faster than anyone else." The writer describes a training session: "I mostly see her stepping over 10 hurdles set three feet apart...and that's about all she is doing for the better part of three hours...drilling it into both mind and body...to maintain perfect posture, which helps to keep her feet below the center of mass, which helps her explode through the hips."