Trent Grimsey knows open water swimming. The three time Australian national champion is also the fastest person to swim the English Channel. Here’s some of his open water swimming tips for starting and finishing an open water race:
In the swim leg of a triathlon or even an ocean swim, what is involved? It’s not just swimming. There’s also a run into the water (the start) and the run out of the water (the finish).
Starts and finishes are generally overlooked in training. Why? Especially when focusing a little more on this area could make a big difference to your overall time. For a weaker swimmer, having a good start could be the difference between swimming with the pack or having a lonely swim by yourself 30 meters behind. For a strong swimmer, a good start could be the difference between you swimming at the front of the pack or being able to break away from the field.
Starts and finishes are like any skill in life. The more you practice them, the better you’ll become. So make sure you get down to the beach as often as possible to do some in’s and out’s practice – running into the surf, taking 10 strokes, stop, turning around and returning to shore. Let’s break it down. There are three main components involved with starts and finishes, running, wading and dolphin diving. When you’re practicing your in’s and out’s you need to remember you can wade faster than you can dolphin dive, and you can dolphin dive faster than you can swim.
Wade (run into the water with high knees and out to the side) until it gets too deep, then dolphin dive (pushing yourself off the bottom of the ocean floor and jump/dive as far forward as you can) until it gets too deep to be able to do this, then start swimming.
Most triathlon/ocean swim starts are on the sand so it’s important to incorporate some sand running into your training. It doesn’t need to be a lot but you need to be confident that you can run competently on soft and hard sand. Running on sand is also a good way to build up ankle strength.
In your next pool session try incorporating running around the pool into your workouts and warm downs. For example, if you have 8×50 for warm down, then run around the pool between each 50. After swimming for a long period of time our body gets used to being in the horizontal position. Swimming 50 meters, then running a lap around the pool gets our bodies used to going from the horizontal to the vertical position. The more we can get our bodies used to doing that the easier it will be on race day when you are sprinting up the beach to the finish line or into transition.
See you on the beach!
Trent Grimsey
English Channel Record Holder
3 Time Australian Open Water Champion
www.trentgrimsey.com
Do you want access to all of Trent’s training secrets? Check this out.
Did I miss something? What is with all of the open water training here? Seems as if every article is on open water. I think we need an interview with Salo on 17.86 and how it happened.