Long Distance OW Swim

Clean water. How lovely...

I'm doing the CWSC too and then the following week I'm doing the ChillSwim in Windermere.

In April I am doing a 24 mile swim - 1 mile per hour on the hour for 24 hours

SuperCaz wrote (see)

In April I am doing a 24 mile swim - 1 mile per hour on the hour for 24 hours

 

  Where's that?  Don't you get cold waiting for the hour to restart?  That's a serious sleep deprevation challenge.

Guildford lido, ITB.  I'm doing it solo, but lots of people are doing it as a relay instead.

Its going to be a huge challenge for me.  Nutrition will be an issue, sleep won't happen, the cold will be a big challenge and putting wet swimming costumes back on.  If I can do that then I think I will be well prepared for the Channel.  I'm using it as a training session for my Channel crew too

SuperCaz that swim sounds like an epic challenge!! Good luck with it and the training.  Sounds like perfect pre channel training.

Im psycing up to finding somewhere outdoors to train for my swim in May. Got to get me used to outdoor swimming and make a wetsuit or no wetsuit decision  

anyone else got any challenges on the horizon? 

Oh anyother question. Has anyone used one of these Garmin swim watches. I quite fancy the one that counts pool lengths and total distance swam in a week (£110 ish) and I like the look of the GPS one but cant afford really  

Just wondering if anyone has any recommendations. 

I think they are great. Well I haven't used the swim, but I have the gps one. The swim watch is probably better in the pool as its a much slimmer watch. Not as useful for OW swimming obviously. Though it probably gives you a stroke rate in OW as well so still better than a normal watch. Tracking the total distance swam is a good motivator as well. I usually set a monthly target of say 30k and it helps get me to the pool!

Any reviews I've seen put the garmin watches ahead of the competition and at pretty reasonable prices too.

I've got the Garmin 910 I think.  I love that it counts the lengths for me, now that I'm doing significant distance in the pool.  It isn't 100% accurate but its more accurate than I am capable of counting for distances over 100 lengths.

I'm less worried about distance in OW as so much depends on tides, currents, wind etc so the distance can be quite decieving.  For example I did 1.2k in 9 minutes in the river last month whereas it would take me about 21 min in the pool.  The difference was because the river was flowing particulrly fast that day and had nothing to do with the level of effort I was putting in.

Thanks for the info B. Gonna buy the pool one for training and attempt to save for the GPS in time for swim in May I like the idea of getting performance stats online. Nice way to track progress. 

I did my first swim in the snow today.  In fact I loved it so much that I did 3!

Not sure whether that is worthy of a Long Distance thread though, as I only did about 400m total

Hey guys long time since any one has posted here so thought I would post and try to get some advice from you guys. 

Its my Eton 10k swim on Monday and I am getting a little bit nervous now . I did a (very) small practice open swim in my wetsuit and it seemed ok to swim in. 

My question is do any of you have any advice?  I am anticipating doing the 10k in 3hrs 30mins at a steady pace with a break or two. Any last training or diet or wetsuit or ?? tips?? 

I am not training this week as I am guessing a good rested body is going to help. Training prior was good got to doing 5k in the pool with relative ease and could have gone on. Crams were an issue in the pool but mainly pushing off the wall so I am guessing these will be lessened on the day? 

Thanks guys 

Hi Jamie, can't offer any advice but will be interested to hear how you get on, I fancy doing some longer swimming events. I do find I get less cramp in open water but still cramp up occasionally.

Good luck on Monday.