The Swimming Thread - Pool/OW

[onedsla]

I've been getting wet again. Difficult to work around tide times, but had some awesome weather. I'm wearing a wetsuit but for Monday and today I could have possibly got away without - hands / feet / head were fine.



Was easy to forget that this is within a 10 minute drive / 15min ride / 30min jog from home.

I've been continuing to keep fit by running 7-10 miles most days plus 15 minutes in my home gym. I've not felt too out of swim-shape in the water, but difficult to judge without a wall every 25m.

Edited by onedsla on Wednesday 27th May 17:33

[Barchettaman]

Back in the water here in Frankfurt - the pools opened yesterday!

Lovely swim in the Stadionbad, by the Eintracht Frankfurt stadium.

[Highway Star]

onedsla said:

I've not felt too out of swim-shape in the water, but difficult to judge without a wall every 25m.

Exactly this. I've been going to a lake for a swim twice a week for the past couple of weeks, doing 3-4km each time and 3x a week on my rowing machine in my garage since lockdown. I've lost a bit of weight and my ergo times have definitely improved, but I suspect I've lost a fair bit of swim fitness. Its difficult to judge my swim speed as I don't have a watch and I just tend to get into a bit of a plod. Lightning last night made it a bit more interesting though!

[Otispunkmeyer]

Barchettaman said:

Back in the water here in Frankfurt - the pools opened yesterday!

Lovely swim in the Stadionbad, by the Eintracht Frankfurt stadium.

Any rules in place for keeping distance or is it simply left up you?

Here the swim England guidance just seems totally over the top. To the point they say don’t be doing strokes like fly or breast. I don’t really get it and Much of it just seems fanciful.

Much like all the guidance at work looks excellent and well thought out on paper (To the seat shiners that is) but in practice they mean you couldn’t actually perform the job you’ve been kept employed to do. So it all just goes out the window and maybe some people wear masks.

[onedsla]

Otispunkmeyer said:

Here the swim England guidance just seems totally over the top.

Yet still we cannot get back in the (indoor) water, whilst going to the pub is fine.

Dread to think what some of the beginner club swimmers I was coaching back in March will be like when we finally get back.

I'm trying to take advantage of the sea (had a lovely swim today) and actually saw one other swimmer - which surprised me as it was very choppy out there on Sunday. Looking forward to being able to get to Wales (from 13th?) where we have a super-calm East facing bay on our doorstep.

[mcelliott]

New to this thread - before lockdown I could barely swim, so during lockdown I was going in the sea every day basically to just bob up and down, in just a pair of shorts. It was very cold. Then one day I decided to see if I could actually swim, so 10m led to 20, and 30, and so on. Then the other day I swam from one side of my bay to the other, which was 48 minutes of swimming. So feeling quite chuffed. I find the whole thing physically and mentally amazing, and plan to continue. My mum swims every day in the sea year-round, and she's 84, so it's only fair that I try and follow her lead.

Here's a pic of the bay that I swim in.

Edited by mcelliott on Friday 26th June 19:06

[chandrew]

Great to see so many lovely swim photos / swims getting done.

Here our pool opened fully a few weeks ago. It had been 'opened' to small groups, mostly the pros for about a month before. Now it's back to normal busy summer time.

I live at 1750m in St. Moritz and it's one of the top altitude training spots. I think last summer we had about 300 elite athletes training here (though a lot are track & field and use the pool mostly for water-based non-swim training). It's quite common to have to share the pool with olympic medal winners (last year the pool put a gallery of photos of just some of the athletes who train there along one wall.) Needless to say in the summer I feel like one of the slowest in the pool.

I'm still trying to swim in open water where possible. Last weekend we went to Lugano and the family let me get a few long swims in. The water was 25 degrees and crystal-clear. Total paradise!

[mcelliott]

Swimming about 1km a day which for me is good going, sea temp up to 14c which means I can do an hour before I get cold, loads of Blue jellyfish though.

[Highway Star]

I'm hopeful I might be back in the pool perhaps next week. My swimming club is looking at starting sessions again and our squad is relatively small so no problems with social distancing! Can't wait as have stopped OW swimming due to constantly getting swimmers itch when swimming in the lakes.

[dirty boy]

Highway Star said:

I'm hopeful I might be back in the pool perhaps next week. My swimming club is looking at starting sessions again and our squad is relatively small so no problems with social distancing! Can't wait as have stopped OW swimming due to constantly getting swimmers itch when swimming in the lakes.

We're back in the pool tonight (outdoor lido) so chuffed to bits.

I also had my first river swim yesterday, jumped off my paddleboard and did about 200m before hanging was really warm though, i'd estimate it was 20 degrees as I was in shorts only and I wasn't cold at all.

Looking forward to getting in the pool again though.

[Otispunkmeyer]

Highway Star said:

I'm hopeful I might be back in the pool perhaps next week. My swimming club is looking at starting sessions again and our squad is relatively small so no problems with social distancing! Can't wait as have stopped OW swimming due to constantly getting swimmers itch when swimming in the lakes.

Back next week with 2 sessions a week. Its not in our regular pool though, we've been give access to (I think), King Edwards school in Coalville? Something like that. Its a campus school so there are no students till Sept and so we have the rest of this month and August at least. Can't frickin wait

I actually bought a wetsuit as well with the intention of going to Stoney Cove but I'll be buggered if I can get a slot for times I can actually get there!

[Highway Star]

Saturday morning 7.30 I’ll be at the pool (private school) in my Speedos knocking down the door!

[Otispunkmeyer]

Managed a go in Stoney on Saturday (they seem to release more spaces like the day before).

Not my first open water swim, but my first in-land, fresh water swim (having done plenty of sea stuff). It was alright! and I wasn't as out of shape as I thought, though I am sure the wetsuit helped. Managed 2 laps of the cove before the shoulder started to cry enough. a lap is about 900 m I think.

First pool session tonight will likely tell a different tale! Its not the best pool either ( school poo, 4 lanes, high sides, rope lane lines, it'll be chop-city). But I don't care right now!

Will be going back to Stoney Cove I think. Makes for a nice extra session.

Also, Heads up for the 29th.... There is that HBO documentary of which Michael Phelps plays a big part in, about Olympic athletes and the highs and lows of Olympic level performance. It'll be very very interesting to watch that!

[FunkyNige]

Finally got back in the pool last night after 4 months off, it was so nice to have a dose of normality for a change! Pool was pretty empty (normally about 12 swimmers when I go, there were 4 I think) but I got 1500m in to ease myself back into things, and bizarrely at about the same pace I was swimming before lockdown, not sure how that happened! Only distancing enforced in the pool was max 8 per lane and keep 5m distance but you can't really fit 8 in a lane at the best of times as the paces are so mixed in that pool due to the more serious swimmers using the university 50m pool.

edit - and just seen an email from Speedo saying their SpeedoOn app is being discontinued, it hasn't worked in a while on my iPhone but it was the best of the stats loggers when it did work!

Edited by FunkyNige on Tuesday 28th July 09:04

[Salted_Peanut]

FunkyNige said:

and just seen an email from Speedo saying their SpeedoOn app is being discontinued

I saw that too, and it's a shame. I wonder what alternatives are for tracking swim training; many of the fitness trackers don't have adequate water resistance.

[Jakg]

Salted_Peanut said:

I saw that too, and it's a shame. I wonder what alternatives are for tracking swim training; many of the fitness trackers don't have adequate water resistance.

I'm sure there are alternatives, but my Apple Watch does it fine.

[FunkyNige]

Jakg said:

Salted_Peanut said:

I saw that too, and it's a shame. I wonder what alternatives are for tracking swim training; many of the fitness trackers don't have adequate water resistance.

I'm sure there are alternatives, but my Apple Watch does it fine.

I think most of the new trackers can measure pool swimming now, my Vivoactive 3 certainly can.

It's the logging I'm going to miss - Strava doesn't give you much apart from distance and pace, GarminConnect gives some pretty graphs, etc. but the Speedo app gave all that plus automatic personal bests, compared pace to others in your age group, little assessments of your swim, etc. OK nothing that would help me swim faster (though there are training plans) but it's the something that catered to swimming like Strava does for cycling and running.

[anonymous-user]

Been really enjoying using these form goggles for OW and pool swimming recently.

https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2020/07/hands-on-form-...

They’ve been out for a while but the open water software update is new. They link to your apple or Garmin watch and give you a head up display with different metrics as you swim.

[anonymous-user]

onedsla said:

Yet still we cannot get back in the (indoor) water, whilst going to the pub is fine.

Dread to think what some of the beginner club swimmers I was coaching back in March will be like when we finally get back.

I'm trying to take advantage of the sea (had a lovely swim today) and actually saw one other swimmer - which surprised me as it was very choppy out there on Sunday. Looking forward to being able to get to Wales (from 13th?) where we have a super-calm East facing bay on our doorstep.

Loads of the clubs around my way have been using the reservoir I swim in.

My local pool is open again and it’s a standard Olympic, split into a 25m with diving and other pool.

They’ve limited it to three lanes which you have to book. Works well but as the weather is still awesome I’m sticking to openwater for as long as possible this year.

Loads more quarries and reservoirs and lakes doing open water around my way this year. Some are great but some get a bit carried away with the rules.

I think it depends on who’s in charge I.e. if it’s swimmers then it’s great but if the lake is run by fishing etc then the rules for swimming (overtaking etc) are usually OTT.

[Otispunkmeyer]

https://www.swimming.org/swimengland/ponds-forge-m...

Well that sucks!