Triple Olympic Gold Medallist Ariarne Titmus is an expert at putting a race strategy together, and she shares how she goes about it in the pool, so you can get some tips for your ocean swimming races.

“When you are putting a race strategy together you want to really play to your strengths,” said Ariarne.

“There is no point in trying to capitalise on something that you are not the best at. For me, I know that I have great back-end speed over 200m and 400m freestyle races, so I still try to take it out quite hard but conserve a little bit of energy so I can use my speed in the second half of the race.

“I think it is still really important for me to think about the little things, such as my turns and underwaters because every second adds up.

“While I’m not an experienced ocean swimmer, I think when you are heading into an ocean swim event, if I look at it as a long-distance race similar to when I race an 800m or 1500m freestyle event, I think you have to break the race down into parts.

“You want to have a strategy for each quarter of the race or depending on what distance you are doing, each kilometre of the race.

“For example, if you are doing a 10km ocean swim, you want to put a strategy in place for how you want to swim each 2.5km. This will help the race go quicker and keep you motivated throughout such a long period of time.

“You also want to just be confident in your race plan, don’t make a race plan you think you can’t do, make sure you make a plan that you can execute to the best of your ability.”

Ariarne’s top tips on how to put a race strategy together

• Play to your strengths and capitalise on what you are good at
• Have a different strategy for each quarter of your race
• Be confident about your race plan
• Execute it to the best of your ability

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