For most of those who swim open water, the experience is the thing. Like many who run in road races, they’re not racing in the strictest sense. They enjoy swimming with dozens or hundreds of others in a natural, even somewhat wild, environment. Open water swims are richly rewarding for all the reasons Dave Barra lists, without regard to where you place or the color of your medal. For such swimmers, the goal at the start is to avoid what looks chaotic, even violent. And even for many of those who are trying to medal or even win their age group – triathletes often included – the fast moving, congested lead pack is something to be avoided, as an email excerpt from Patrick Brundage suggests.

Patrick, who I coached from age 11 to 15, has been a nationally-ranked distance swimmer in the pool since age 12. He recently swam his first USMS National Long Distance Championship, the 1.76-mile Long Bridge Swim in Sandpoint ID. After finishing a respectable 3rd in the 40-44 men (and 5th overall), he reflected on how the disorderly nature of OW starts intimidated him enough to affect his performance over the rest of the race.

In a message dated 8/7/2007 10:52:12 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, Patrick Brundage writes:

>> I avoided the congestion at the start by starting wide, but ended up going wider. There really was no excuse, though, as the swim follows the bridge and has the sun at your back. I clearly have a lot to learn about OW swimming. >>

Getting in with the lead pack can greatly improve your overall finish, if you can handle the congestion, contact and a few minutes of what – in a pool race – would be an almost suicidal pace. In a pool, the soundest strategy for distance swimming is to start at a conservative pace, build throughout and finish fast. In OW, because drafting in mid-race can allow you to recover from the high heart rate and initial fatigue of a fast start – and because you can even swim faster than your natural pace while recovering, if drafting off sufficiently fast swimmers – starting fast can be good strategy. Fortunately, it’s a learnable skill, albeit one it took me years to master.

Though I've been racing in OW since 1973, as recently as three years ago, I avoided the congestion too. I was still imprinting new stroke habits and felt I needed 200 to 400 meters of leisurely, almost meditative, swimming at the start to "find my groove." Like Patrick, I'd start off to the side and swim as if it was a solo practice jaunt for three to five minutes, then begin picking people off and be passing other swimmers continuously for the rest of the race. It was satisfying to do so, but though I always medaled in my age group – sometimes gold – I was often slightly dissatisfied with my place in the total field. I also knew from experience that while lots of people could swim faster than me at the start, very few could sustain a pace to the end as well.

As I gained confidence in my new stroke habits I began to raise the bar. I began practicing some short bursts of higher-power, controlled-stroke-rate swimming, rehearsing for the first 200 meters. I used my new strategy for the first time in the 2005 USMS 2-Mile Cable Swim in Lake Placid. As a result I stayed with a pretty fast pack for virtually the entire distance and shocked myself with a time of 45:43, nearly four minutes faster than I'd gone on the same course the previous summer. I was only five months removed from surgery to reattach the biceps tendon in my right shoulder – for which recovery is typically 10 to 12 months. I'd done little "training" and definitely was not well conditioned.

While I had made some invaluable improvements in my stroke during my gentle rehab swimming, I also recognized that the main reason I swam that fast was drafting off a pack that was swimming at a markedly faster pace than I could manage on my own. That convinced me it was essential to train myself to start OW races in a dramatically different way than I do when swimming similar or shorter distances – i.e. 1000 to 1650 yds – in the pool.

As I began experimenting with that strategy in various races, I experienced a lot of contact and learned how to maintain a good enough stroke – not my highest efficiency, but a place from which I could resume high efficiency swimming after things calmed down. Also, this summer, using the Tempo Trainer I've trained myself to be comfortable and efficient at significantly higher Stroke Rates. Here’s what I've learned about “swimming with sharks”:

1) Concentrate deeply. Get on someone's feet and hold your stroke.

2) “Surrender” to contact. I swim with a very compact, but very relaxed recovery. When my arms or shoulders get hit, I yield to the contact at the edges, but stay stable in the core. My body isn't buffeted as it would be if my arms were tense or rigid.

3) Raise your tempo. Raise your tempo. I'm prepared now to swim for several minutes at a pretty high tempo. Indeed it even seems easier to keep form amidst contact when my rhythm is quicker. In other words, that rhythm feels something like "armor."

4) Don’t look. Don’t look. It's a lot easier to keep the pace and your stroke if you're just swimming, not constantly looking for that first buoy. So believe that the pack IS going the right way and if you're in the middle of it, you will too. At Grimaldo’s Mile at Coney Island, by the time I first looked for the first buoy I was nearly on top of it, but dead on. In that race and the Metro Ocean Mile the previous weekend, I rounded that buoy with the first three to five swimmers in sizeable fields. Never having had any natural speed in my life, this is literally thrilling.

After that the pace slackens a bit, I concentrate on a lighter but more stable catch, higher elbows at the beginning of each stroke and synchronizing my arm-spear with my 2BK. All of that produces good speed at low energy cost. I feel my heart rate drop and I enter a very sustainable effort zone. But I'm also swimming with the better people in the field. The rest of the way, I pass far fewer than I used to, but finish much higher overall.

I’m unusually fortunate in one way. From June through September, I swim most days at two lakes, Fourth Binnewater and Minnewaska, often with a group of as many as five friends, including Dave Barra, Kate Gulitti, Hash al-Mashat, Greg Sautner and Willie Miller, ranging from 15 to 25 years younger than me. We regularly practice swimming in tight packs, literally inches apart. All of us have learned to stay in our own small space, maintain keen concentration on our own stroke, and yet draw an undeniable energy from those around us. All of us agree that, done well, it’s a truly exhilarating experience.