Water Safety

Im talking about my safety here.

The thought of doing ocean swims can be pant crapping, head spinning, hysteria inducingly scary.

I dont know about you, but my deepest fears are as follows:

-          Clowns

-          Masks

-          Hands

-          Seaweed

-          Sharks

Now, 2 out of these 5 fears happen to coencide with ocean swimming. Awesome.

I did a race in Kurnell in January and about 300 metres into the swim, I went through a patch of seaweed. I screamed, stopped swimming, hyperventilated and realised that the only way to get the hell out of there was to swim- fast. So whilst humming the theme to Jaws, I sprinted the rest of the distance to shore. Good news, it was a great swim time. Bad news, I couldnt braeth properly for the rest of the race.  Note to self, bring paper bags into transition for instances just like this.

How I have managed to get past this?  I havent.

But I have sorted out the shark thing.... to a point. See below for pointers on not thinking about sharks.

Do:

-          Swim with someone for the first few times you go out. Safety in numbers. Also helps to swim with someone a bit chunkier than you, thus providing a tastier alternative for the shark.

-          Wear a swimming cap. If you have longer hair, seeing your hair floating in your peripheral vision looks like a shark... It doesn’t end well, believe me.

-          Swim when there are heaps of people around and the sun is out.

Don’t:

-          Don’t wear tinted/dark goggles. Makes you feel like you’re in a ‘Blair Witch meets Jaws’ styled ocean project.  Wear nice clear ones. I figure you need to see what’s going on around you, otherwise your imagination tells you what you what to see.

-          Don’t think about sharks. Easier said than done. My personal favourite form of distraction is general thought rambling. Eg ‘ I wonder how fast turtles might be able to move if they were in space. Would they need N.A.S.A freeze dried bluebottles to eat whilst they were up there? If you filled a whole heap of bluebottles full of helium, then gave them to turtles to eat, would they then be lighter and subsequently able to move faster when on land? I guess the bluebottles would need some sort of super strong encasing so that the turtles couldn’t digest it properly...otherwise it wouldn’t work, the turtle would probably just burp the helium out once the stomach acids burst the bubble... or are they like a dog and can’t burp?’... and so it goes on, you get the idea.  Other schools of thought suggest you should focus on stroke and breathing techniques... Whatever works.