Riley Martin Blogs About Open Water Select Camp
June 05, 2010 | Swimming & Diving
June 5, 2010
Riley Martin blogs about his week at the USA Swimming Open Water Select Camp experience.
When I came to the University of Louisville and developed into a distance swimmer, I thought I was training to compete at the limits of my sport. This weekend in Long Beach, California, I found out just how wrong I was. Thanks to an opportunity I was given to attend the USA Swimming Open Water Select camp, I got to take part in my first Open Water National Championships 10 kilometer race.
The Camp:
The camp itself is held once every summer prior to the national championship open water event. USA Swimming selects 12 men and 12 women who have never before participated in the camp and never made the national team and sends them to learn from open water swimming experts. We were taught a variety of drills and race strategies geared toward a swimming event that is fundamentally different from the events that we ordinarily swim in the pool. The camp is specifically focused on training young men and women in the sport who have had very little to no experience with open water swimming. I, along with 23 of my peers, spent two days at California State University Long Beach swimming in a pool and at the Marine Stadium in Long Beach practicing drills. We focused specifically on learning to swim in large groups, very close together, and turning around buoys. For someone who is used to competing in a lane by himself, turning on a solid wall ever 25 yards to 50 meters, this was quite an interesting experience. The length of the race also required that we learn how to "feed" during the race, which, as it sounds, means we had to learn to eat in the middle of the race while on the move. All of this was in addition to a variety of "classroom" sessions, during which we watched race footage of past championship races and learned from Fran Crippen, one of USA Swimming's best and most successful open water athletes. The atmosphere was one of exploration and learning, as we were stepping into a world of swimming that was almost as different from what we knew of the pool as pool swimming is to many other sports on land.
The Race:
This morning we put our newly acquired skills into practice as we all competed in the grueling 10k open water race. The Marine Stadium was set up in such a way that we swam 5 2 kilometer laps, with a single buoy at each end of the 1 kilometer, forcing us to complete a veritable U-Turn at each end. The race took me a little over 2 hours, which was the average time for most of the competitors. The 10k, then, is much like a half-marathon in swimming. The race is so completely different from any other race I had ever swum before. The water was frigid, at least 10 degrees colder than the optimum racing temperature in a pool, and we had to battle the conditions of the outdoors, complete with referee boats and moderate winds. The biggest difference, however, was clearly in the competition. Where a pool race pits me against 7 other swimmers, each to our own lane, the open water event puts me in the water with 45 other men, all fighting for a small spot in the pack. Drafting is an incredibly important component of the race, and the winner very often spends the first 7-8 kilometers behind 20 other swimmers, riding in their wake. My own experience was painful, to put it mildly, as I underestimated the length of the race and made a move far too early, losing any and all energy for the last 4 kilometers. All in all, it was a great experience, and one that I am sure to have again. Open water swimming is something that requires experience in order to excel, even more than strict training, and I intend to make sure that my next experiences can continue to get better. Open water swimming is gaining momentum in the sport of swimming, and it is an excellent opportunity to learn something new and compliment those elements of the sport with which we are already familiar. I am looking forward to 2012 Olympic Trials for the Open Water which will actually be June of 2011.
