As folks who have known me for some time, I have an odd phobia of swimming in the ocean alone. This is inconvenient, as I would really like to do some distance swimming in the Med. I've been training up to it, and have made quite a bit of progress. Unfortunately, really getting more than a quarter mile off shore is still daunting. Since we often swim in a local pool, I've been using that to train up.
I've been trying to make the practice a bit more similar to swimming in the open ocean by keeping my eyes closed and trying to imagine that I'm actually in deep water. Unfortunately, it doesn't take long for me to start wandering out of my swim lane and creating problems. Hopefully, improvements in my form will help keep me going in one direction on autopilot. We'll see...
Friday, November 27, 2009
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Ifyou have access to a local pool, why do you want to do long distance open water swimming?
ReplyDeleteI mean with all the natural predetors out there, why risk it?
1. Man eating regular sized fish (they love finger and toes the best)
2. Dead people- just waiting for someone to wander out too far!
3. Sharks- they don't really like eating people but are saving space in their tummies for a certain someone!
Overcoming fears is lots of fun, but it seems to me that your fear of swimming alone in the ocean and your curvilinear swimming bias (which just might be related your fear of swimming alone in the ocean) are both highly adaptive.
ReplyDeletewatching 'open water' pretty much killed my desire to swim in the ocean... and i'm always wary of jellyfish.
ReplyDeleteIf you do decide to swim in deep water, i hope you end up curving your line in toward shore and not in a Bismark-like arch out to sea... especially since you really should be keeping your eyes open and looking down into the water... that's where the sharks are waiting.
ReplyDeletekp
Are you alternating the sides you breathe on? That is the only way I have been partially successful in open swimming a straight line. Give it a try.
ReplyDeleteGrandpa Dan