FEATURES the scrum and her hopes for 2012
TRAINING BASICS .....................................28 Coach Rick Kiddle kicks off his training plan to get you going before summer
NUTRITION ...................................................32 Does fat make you fast?
SWIM FASTER! ............................................36 Seven top tips for getting up to speed
without (much) more effort
BEAT THE COLD ..........................................38 The H2Open guide to surviving a winter swim…
BEGINNER'S GUIDE ..................................42 New to open water? What’s it all about?
SWIM THE WORLD .....................................46 Rottnest Channel – is this Australia’s toughest challenge?
GEAR ...............................................................49 The pick of this season’s goggles, how to use
training aids and new swimming kit we like
SWIM PLUS ..................................................60 Transferring your pool-based skills
REGULARS
NEWS .............................................................................10 LETTERS ......................................................................17 VIEW FROM A COACH .............................................19 ICONIC SWIMS ..........................................................20 CLASSIC SWIMS ......................................................22 TOP SPOTS .................................................................41 ASK THE EXPERTS .................................................57 RACE LISTINGS ........................................................58 LIDO LIFE ....................................................................63 COMPETITION ...........................................................65 I OWS .......................................................................66
MAIN SET
MDiscovering secret beaches, splashing around hidden waterfalls, paddling moonlit rivers... swimming outside has truly caught people’s imagination over the past couple of years. Books and programmes on wild swimming, celebrity Channel crossings and the emergence of mass participation swim events, such as the British Gas Great Swim Series and the Nokia Thames Swim, are showing us that swimming outside is fun, challenging and healthy. Open water swimming isn't new, of course. The ancient Japanese, Romans and medieval knights all enjoyed competitive races in rivers and lakes. In modern times, the vogue was reinvigorated by Lord Byron, who swam several miles from Europe to Asia at Hellespont (now known as Dardanelles) in 1810. Support grew and, in 1896, the swimming competition of the first modern Olympics was held in open water.
RIVERS IN THE UK ARE CLEANER THAN THEY’VE BEENFOR 150 YEARS
According to the River and Lake Swimming Association (RALSA), outdoor swimming was “a very popular leisure activity in the 1920s and 1930s”, giving rise to many still-existent swimming clubs. No doubt, people have been swimming, relaxing, cooling down or showing off in open water ever since our species evolved, if not before. Sadly, however, in the last generation or two, overzealous health and safety types have managed to convince many of us that open water is dirty and dangerous and that we should all go and swim in nice, safe, supervised, sterile indoor pools.
TAKE ITOUTSIDE!
The H2Open introduction to the where, what, when, how and why of open water swimming. The ‘who’ is you. Words: Simon Griffiths
Photo © blueseventy
HOW SAFE IS OPEN WATER SWIMMING? Open water swimming is not without its dangers, say the experts, but safety can be ensured by being wise and taking precautions. Rob Fryer, chairman of the Farleigh and District River Swimming Club, says: “Wild swimming is more dangerous than swimming in a life-guarded indoor pool, but it is only reckless if undertaken recklessly. Awareness of the risks involved will help you to reduce your exposure to them.” A look at the River and Lake Swimming Association (RALSA) website gives more of an idea of what the actual risks are in outdoor swimming and how to calculate them. Statistics taken from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) show that just eight percent of drownings of a given year (2002) were swimming related, of these only 18 occurred in rivers, lakes, estuaries, streams or the sea, as opposed to swimming pools. Of these: "95 percent of these were male", mostly 11-25 and a large proportion of them while ‘under the influence’. "Beware of alcohol, bravado, carelessness and recklessness. It can so easily lead to tragedy", is RALSA's message for people, who – it believes – should manage the risks of OWS by understanding them, rather than simply being told to avoid swimming outside. As for worries about cleanliness, the Outdoor Swimming Society website points out that: “rivers in the UK are cleaner than they've been for 150 years”, and recommends judging lakes and rivers by eye – “if it looks unappealing (scummy or cloudy), then your instinct to stay out is a good one”. Both the RALSA and OSS websites are
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great resources on the subject of staying safe, water cleanliness and open water swimming in general. For more accurate diagnoses, the Environment Agency
website (
environment-agency.gov.uk) can give a rating for a given stretch of water, if you enter the postcode of the locale into its search engine. A, B and C are acceptable swimming ratings; D and E are not. Additional advice, given by the Love Your Lakes campaign (
loveyourlakes.org), recommends that swimmers avoid contact with algae and cover cuts before entering the water, to guard against the rare chance of illness and infection.
We've got nothing against swimming pools. They are
fantastic places to learn to swim, train under consistent conditions and keep warm. Top open water swimmers such as David Davies and Keri-Anne Payne do almost all of their training in indoor pools. The only problem with pools is that their very fit-for-purpose existence leads us to blindly accept they are the only places to swim. So much so that many are scared to 'take it outside',
worried about health and safety, or water quality. Thankfully organisations such as RALSA and Outdoor Swimming Society are doing a superb job of changing people’s attitudes (see box).
GETTING STARTED
The first step is to decide why you want to swim outside. Do you want to relax in a scenic location, seek the buzz that comes from immersion in cold water, take on
KERI-ANNE PAYNE ...................................24 The champion talks to us about surviving
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