# Back in the lake



## Chris Hobson (Jul 20, 2021)

A few days ago I was posting about my return to the swimming pool after a long break. Today saw my return to open water swimming at Allerthorpe near York. This time there was quite a bit of stuff to gather together from various parts  of the house. I have recently bought a new Garmin Fenix watch which records open water swims so I was looking forward to testing it out. It is a very hot and sunny day and, although I wore my wetsuit, I think that the water was probably warm enough to have gone without it. I have put on a little bit of weight over the past year so getting in and out of my wetsuit was a bit of a struggle. It seemed to be restricting my movements a bit for a start but later seemed to have stretched a bit and loosened up. The lake has a circle of buoys for swimmers to go around and, although I was more or less swimming in circles, my watch has recorded a random series of zigzags which suggests that it is picking up the satellite signal only intermittently. After the swim we stopped of at the cafe at a nearby garden centre for a nice fried breakfast. One more step in my quest to get swim fit.


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## Kitty W (Jul 27, 2021)

Well done for getting into the lake.

I'd like to share a tip with you I've found out recently with my Garmin Forerunner, that maybe the same with the Fenix. When I am swimming in Open Water I change the 'data recording' setting from 'smart' to 'every second'. 
To change this on the Forerunner watch I go to Settings, system, data recording. I find with it set to every second I get a much better GPS trace. Also swimming front crawl tends to give a better trace the breaststroke. 

I hope this helps and even if it doesn't just enjoy the swimming


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## Chris Hobson (Jul 27, 2021)

I'm trying to do more front crawl now rather than breast stroke, crawl is certainly more efficient especially when wearing a wetsuit. At the moment I'm not properly swim fit so I'm not getting enough air to sustain it without stopping for a breather, that problem should go as I get fitter. The other problem is not being able to see where you are going of course. My breast stroke has always been quite strong, 2.4 miles in 90 minutes, and one of the fun parts of doing it was watching the freestylers wandering off course.


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