Keri-Anne Payne’s open water swimming tips

• Work on making your stroke as streamlined as possible while you’re training in the pool. Have a coaching session to help hone your technique (Swim For Tri www.swimfortri.co.uk is excellent and does open-water swim sessions too; or trywww.totalimmersion.co.uk).
• When you’re training in the pool, make sure you can comfortably swim the distance you’ll be doing outdoors so you’re confident you can do it when faced with a big expanse of open water with no walls to grab onto.
• You’ll be leaving behind a warm swimming pool with helpful black lines on the bottom, but you shouldn’t have to change your stroke much – just look up every few strokes to check you’re going in a straight line! If the water’s choppy, make your stroke shorter and sharper.
• Invest in a good wetsuit (make sure it’s not too restrictive on the shoulders), swimming cap and goggles with good peripheral vision – these will help you enjoy the experience more and swim more efficiently. Wetsuits make you more buoyant in the water (as well as keeping you warm!) so are excellent for your confidence as you head outside. It may feel a little restrictive at first, but try to relax and you’ll get used to the feeling.
• If you’re swimming in an event with other people, don’t panic. Just take it at your own pace and don’t go too fast at the beginning – you can always speed up later on if you have the energy left.

Keri-Anne Payne uses the Endomondo Sports Tracker app on a Nokia 6770 (www.endomondo.com) as part of her overall fitness and training plan. It tracks her running speed, times, distances and altitude on a map whilst she’s training.

‘Help me improve my stroke!’

H&F’s chief sub Emma has a swimming session with experienced triathlete and coach Rick Kiddle, to improve her front crawl

Having learnt front crawl as a child, I reverted to breaststroke as an adult. A few years ago, I challenged myself to take up front crawl again. While I was amazed how quickly I progressed from doing just one length and gasping for breath, exhausted, I now feel I’ve reached a plateau and am not improving much. I’ve done a few supersprint triathlons (which involve a 400m swim) in the last couple of years, but would like to feel confident going further and faster.

Time for a lesson! I sign up for a pool session with Rick Kiddle, who was an elite triathlete and has 20 years of competition experience, plus 15 years of coaching under his belt.

After taking a look at my stroke, he says my technique isn’t too bad, which is reassuring. We make some tweaks, though, such as having my fingers a little less tightly clamped together, creating a bigger ‘paddle’ for propelling me through the water more effectively.

He then counts how many strokes I’m doing per length and says I could work on reducing this number to be more efficient. This involves more ‘glide’ between arm strokes and making sure I push my arm all the way back to my hips on each stroke before I bring it out of the water. I could also kick my legs a lot less and save energy, he says. He then times me doing four lengths (100m) at a sprint so I can use this as a benchmark for trying to improve my speed.

Although it’s exhausting after I try it a few times, it makes me realise I don’t usually push myself hard enough in the pool. Now he’s given me a benchmark time I can do 100m in, I can try to improve on this. I can also try to reduce the number of strokes I do in a length. So, armed with these technique and training tips, plus some training fins (small flippers to help practise leg kick) and a Poolmate watch (available from Kiddle’s website, it counts strokes, laps, set times and more) I won’t have time to get bored in the pool.

• For more information on Kiddle’s coaching, seewww.rickkiddle.com. If you fancy an outdoor swim challenge to motivate you, check out the British Gas Great Swim Series. One-mile open-water swims are taking place in Windermere, Lake District, on September 4/5 and Salford Quays, Manchester on September 26. For more information, seewww.britishgas.co.uk/swimming.