Swimmers Must Read

I almost never do it, but this time I had to make an exception, I could not remain silent, I had to stand up for world peace. 

July 25 was like any other day of 2015's hot summer only this Saturday morning I was standing in line at Lake Tiak-O'Khata waiting for my turn to enter the water and begin my 35-mile odyssey called the Heart O' Dixie Triathlon. 

Then I heard it.

He wasn't talking to me, so maybe I should have kept my mouth shut. But world peace demands voices, action, engagement. He said something about drafting while swimming. 

I wanted to scream.

The last time I entered this debate, I was sent a link to a "scientific study" that allegedly proved the value of swim drafting. I know what you are thinking, and it will do little good for me to protest by saying I am not anti-science. But there is science and there is science. 

And then there is the myth of swim drafting. 

How can people be so simple?

It starts with anecdotal evidence which i know is enough to further brand me as anti-scientific. But here is goes anyway. During one of my swims in this same lake, I once got bunched up with a wad of fast swimmers and was having difficulty keeping pace. I feared the swim-over-the-back maneuver which can cause discomfort even death, so I shifted left, got out of the group, and then proceeded to out swim then all once I got into the calm water. 

That is not the only experience that caused me to rethink the whole concept of drafting while swimming. Logic alone should be sufficient to dispel this error, but alas, the human race is far from logical. Think about it. In cycling we draft because it works. We power off the road and the cyclist ahead of us moves air out of his way. In swimming we power not off the road or the bottom but off the water. Big difference. Huge difference. We move the water we power off behind us so that the water is moving not in our direction, as in cycling, but in the opposite direction, into the face of the oncoming swimmer, if there is one delusional enough to be back there.

Think of this: one of the most effective and exhilarating workouts on a bicycle is motor pacing, drafting a car at speeds far beyond what can be achieved in a traditional pace line. The thrill of going so fast gets the cyclist so fired up that he cycles harder than he could in any other circumstance. Try it, but you have to have a smooth road and a trusty driver.

How many times have you seen swimmers in the lake motor boat pacing? I know the answer to that; you tell me the reason. It really doesn't take a socket rientist to figure out that motor boat pacing could never work because of all the turbulence and water coming back behind the boat and into the face and body of the trailing swimmer. Cycling and swimming are different sports that take their thrust from different sources. 

So how did this erroneous concept of swim drafting get s tarted? Somebody thought it up that because you can draft on a bicycle, you can draft while swimming. The error is repeated over and over until everyone believes it despite the fact that you only have to think about it for almost two seconds to see the fallacy of it all.

I do admit that there is some potential for a swim draft IF you get very close to the swimmer in front AND to the side of that swimmer. The swimmer does produce a small slipstream which may be beneficial if one can avoid the turbulence necessarily produced to provide propulsion. But if you get directly behind a swimmer, you are NOT drafting but you are getting rough water thrown at you. 

Stop being a warmongerer. Kill the idea of swim drafting. Do it for world peace.