Drafting

No, I’m not talking about drafting on the bike. I’m talking about drafting on the swim. I can remember fondly the first time I really discovered the beauty of drafting in a swim. When I was an age group swimmer, once I made it to the top levels in our program, we rarely had more than 3 swimmers per lane. Swimmers 2 and 3 in each lane always left 10 seconds apart, and if there was a 4th, then they got to go 5 seconds. If you were lucky enough to be in a lane of 4, you owed your lane mates a big thank you when you got to go 4th and get a little draft effect. Now, in summer when we swam long course, you never got to go 5 seconds, because 100m was far enough that no one was going to catch you. So, 10 seconds it was. Always. I was a sprinter. Ok, I also did 200’s and the occasional 400im, but generally I’d consider myself a sprinter. But I swam at a program that was fairly high yardage, so even us sprinters, especially those of us who were IM’ers, did a lot of distance. I can remember one summer workout, we were doing a 1000m for time at the end of a long workout. It was definitely not my idea of fun. And I was in a lane with a gal who had won the 1650 at NCAA division I a couple years earlier. She was a distance star. I was not any kind of star. But we all trained hard, and when I left 10 seconds after her, I did what any smart sprinter does, I sprinted the first 100m until I caught her! Then I hung on for dear life. And I hung pretty close to her until the last 100m or so. And it was the fastest 1000m I ever swam in my whole life. I never could have swum that fast for 1000m without blatantly drafting off her. She was not real happy with me. But I never touched her feet, I just got soooo close, and then stuck like glue. Inside I was tickled, but I knew I only went that fast because I was able to get on her feet and stay in her draft.

Now I swim alone. I never get to draft. I always lead my lane, I’m the only one in my lane! So I never get to enjoy that draft. This past weekend I had to get in a swim, and with campus being on break, only the small pool is open, and I knew going at the noon swim would be crowded, but it was when I could go. The lanes were packed in with the IU masters team, 5 and 6 deep. Except the lane with their ‘fast’ people. They numbered only 2. SO of course I had to butt in and hop in their lane. I told them I’d stay out of their way, as I was just warming up and they were on a main set. Even with two people, the second person shoved off right after the leader. I scoffed at her lack of confidence in swimming on her own, she is a good swimmer, why does she have to push off right on his feet? So, I shoved off on my warmup after her, thinking they’d pull away, and they didn’t. ok, so here I am swimming at what I’d consider a pedestrian effort, and I was actually cruising along at a good pace. And it was all thanks to the draft. Man have I missed the draft.

So, to all you swimmers/triathletes out there, keep drafting! Take advantage of it. Its legal. And it can be a huge benefit to you. Learn to draft. But, please, learn to do it without annoying the person you are drafting off. Because if you try to draft off me in a race and hit my legs more than an acceptable number of times, you will be the recipient of an evinrude-motor-like-tsunami of water. I'm just sayin.

BTW, here is an interesting open water swim website.