For months I’ve been toying with my tempo and SPL (strokes per length)  with a goal of maintaining SPL as tempo gets faster – and getting more out of each stroke.  Lately, I’ve been happy holding 13 SPL@ 1:10 tempo for cruising speeds 1500m and over.  This translates to about 1:25/100 pace. Having the pool wall to queue for start/stop of lap time and counting strokes is great, but what about when swimming in open water where there are no walls (or a cable to follow)?  I’ve tried out the Garmin, and this is provides pretty good feedback after your swim.  One version has "cadence" which counts strokes on one arm, but often the results are not always accurate for pace and stroke counts since after all, the Garmin is designed primarily for cycling and running.  However the actual distance and swim path  are fairly accurate.  It’s great to see the drift either from traversing currents, or stroke asymmetry and/or poor navigation.  Post swim analysis is nice, but what is most important (to me) is immediate feedback of pace and SPL during an open water swim so more precise adjustments can be made as/if necessary , i.e. "Have I gone out too fast? turn-over too high; too slow; SPL?" And so on …

One of my favorite open water practices is at Venice Beach off the coast of Southern California called Tower 26.  Every Wed morning at 6am you will find about 200 swimmers doing four to six 700-800m circuits (approximately a 1/2 mile).  A circuit is usually a rectangular course, swim out past the surf, out and around two buoys placed about 200m apart, swim back to shore.  We often switch between left shoulder turns (counter clockwise – always have buoy on your left shoulder) and right shoulder turns, but always the same direction on a given day.  Great place to swim in a crowd, prepare for triathlon –  but difficult to determine a sense of pace other than perceived exertion and/or gage other swimmers both faster and slower.  What I have found helpful is counting strokes between the buoys and can usually get a pretty good idea how far apart they are.  But what I strive for is having a consistent stroke count between the buoys which tells me 1. my pace is fairly consistent and 2. I’m swimming fairly straight and not drifting too much.  I can stop and peek at my watch, but there are dozens of swimmers right on my tail that don’t know I just decided to take a moment review swim metrics – not a good thing to do.

Counting strokes between buoys is good ‘relative’  feedback, but only approximate in measuring "true" SPL and pace in open water.  "True" meaning an actual stroke count in a given distance (i.e. 25 yards, 100 meters, 200 meters, etc) *without* the aid of the push off from the wall. Also, what is the actual pace; how can we find our true SPL; what tools/methods can we use that are not GPS driven and give us feedback during an open water swim without stopping to look at a watch or wait for post swim analysis? There are some solutions coming up in part 2 and 3 of this blog, but if you have ideas/methods that work, please post in comments below :-)