Open Water Swimming

We don’t normally focus much here on the pro OW swimmers, but here’s a great slide show from last week’s FINA 10K Pro Swim in NYC that really captures the swimmers mixing it up in what looks like some pretty choppy water.

And speaking of the swim, kudos to 15-year-old Eva Fabian from New Hampshire, who finished a very close second in the women’s race. According to a recent feature on Fabian from SwimNetwork.com, Eva spends a lot of her training time in a 25 meter pool, so there’s some ingenuity in prepping her for open water events.  The article quotes her coach describing some of her workouts:

a weekly set close to the distance she is competing in, for example 50 x 100 for a 5K or 100 x 100 for a 10K, we also do pace-line swimming with long repeats between 1,000 – 2,000 yards.  We team Eva up with 2-4 other swimmers and they all take turns leading the pack for 50, 100 or 200 yards.  They swim on each other’s toes, helping simulate the real-world race conditions at the world championships.  The swimmers exchange leads so they get used to the surges and drafting that are so important in open water racing.”

“Eva also does some great POW [Pool Open Water] workouts where all the lane lines are removed and she races her teammates around the pool….  It teaches positioning and helps develop the ability to have fast turns in crowded conditions which are so important for open water success.”