Tuesday, July 7, 2015

Swim Buoys

Doug and I have been hanging out at our favourite open water swimming spot quite a lot lately. We have less than two weeks until the Gravenhurst triathlon and we both are feeling the need to get a little more comfortable swimming in water where you can't see the bottom, where aquatic plants sometimes wrap themselves around our wrists or our goggles and where we can't put our feet down and touch bottom every time we might want to.

So we keep heading back there and swimming our respective race distances. I've been doing 1.5k every time I go. The first time was tough. I felt my wetsuit constricting my neck. I had to stop several times and focus on controlling my panicky breathing. My arms felt incredibly heavy and everything just felt harder.

Until it started getting easier.

In fact, last night, I was about 500m into my swim when I realized that I was wearing a wetsuit. I mean of course I knew I was wearing it because I had struggled to get the damn thing on but I had forgotten that I was wearing it once I started swimming. No feelings of constriction around my neck, no panicked breathing, nothing. Just swimming.

Nice!

Oh, and can you spot my latest swimming purchase in the photo below?


Being a stickler for safety, I got pretty excited when I heard about this gadget. It's a swim buoy that a) you can store things like car keys in, b) is inflatable, c) makes me much more visible in the water and d) I could technically hang on to in a moment of open-water panic. 

It straps around your waist and floats behind while you swim. I thought I might notice it during a swim but I've actually stopped a few times to make sure it's still attached. And when I head out to swim the last 600m on my own, Doug can watch my orange buoy bobbing along and know exactly were I am. 

Safety first! 

1 comment:

  1. I use one of these on every open-water swim practice I do. In fact, my whole tri club does when we meet up at 5:30 or 6AM to swim at the reservoir. There are occasionally boats on our lake, and it really makes me feel safer, and I find it much easier to sight when I can follow the orange buoy ahead of me.

    They also make very nice pillows to lean into when you're hanging out waiting for the slower swimmers to show up at the turnaround point.

    Late in the season, when the sun doesn't rise super-early, I've been known to put a small LED lantern inside of mine.

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