Open Water Swimming

Caroline and Allison both made it through this year’s lottery to get into the 2009 Bay Swim, along with friends and fellow Richmonders Elizabeth and John.  All of us are relative newcomers to OW distance swimming–that is, all of us have taken it up within the last few years–and some of us are newcomers to competitive swimming in general  With the swim only a little more than 4 months away now, we’ll post some updates about how we are all approaching our training, plus discussions of other related topics, and then we’ll see how it all comes out at the swim!

Recently, we were discussing recovery food/beverage.  Ideally, after a long, hard workout, you want to put some kind of recovery food or beverage into your system right away.  But I know from experience that if I don’t have something with me at the pool, it’s easy for an hour or more can to pass before I find myself sitting down to my post-swim nosh.

After some experimenting with various possibilities, Elizabeth has settled on taking portable, aseptic boxes of chocolate milk with her to drink right after her workout (Horizon organic is good, and you can purchase it in multi-pack boxes at Costco, according to Elizabeth).  Elizabeth reports, “After drinking these consistently after all my workouts, I began to feel stronger and have been able to work out longer and harder before becoming fatigued.”

Allison favors Think bars following her morning workouts.

As previously noted on this blog, I’m partial to nonfat milk with Ovaltine and coffee (hot or cold).  In a recent issue, Bicycling magazine gave the thumbs-up to the value of milk and Ovaltine as recovery beverage.   I feel so cutting edge….

I’ve been lax about getting to my recovery calories within that desirable window of time, so I’m going to try to improve on that point, as I’m not recovering as well as I’d like.