BSA mile swim

[qwazse]

19 minutes ago, mashmaster said:

Not triatholon wetsuits.  They reduce drag.

I've no experience with triathlon wet suits so this is a sincere question: while reducing drag (and presumably keeping up core temperature), do they also increase flotation? My experience with neoprene was that there was a trade-off of one vs. the other.

@69RoadRunner, your point about modesty is well taken. Let's all assume for this discussion that whatever local standards for modesty are being met.

[mashmaster]

3 minutes ago, qwazse said:

I've no experience with triathlon wet suits so this is a sincere question: while reducing drag (and presumably keeping up core temperature), do they also increase flotation? My experience with neoprene was that there was a trade-off of one vs. the other.

@69RoadRunner, your point about modesty is well taken. Let's all assume for this discussion that whatever local standards for modesty are being met.

They are cut differently.  They vary the thickness and material around the suit.  They do provide floation but not like a standard wetsuit.  This is what they kinda look like: https://www.xterrawetsuits.com/pages/googlespecials?gclid=Cj0KCQjwjbveBRDVARIsAKxH7vlXreDJMdGTGCq0QKosC7CeahTCuuq-irBdKHS5he5F1brjSvl0nn8aAnnwEALw_wcB

 

[mashmaster]

13 minutes ago, 69RoadRunner said:

As long as you're not using flippers or something like that, I can't see the type of suit disqualifying a scout.

YPT rules say to wear a modest swimsuit, IIRC, so I don't wear the competition style one I use at the gym and go with boxer style.  My competition style suit isn't bad, but I've seen guys wear ones at the gym that are so tight you can tell their religion.

My son and I wore jammers.  All black ones are reasonable.  Gym shorts over them while walking through camp.  A mile in regular trunks = chaffing.

[69RoadRunner]

10 minutes ago, mashmaster said:

My son and I wore jammers.  All black ones are reasonable.  Gym shorts over them while walking through camp.  A mile in regular trunks = chaffing.

I wear an old, faded jammer type suit under a looser boxer style suit to prevent chafing, particularly at the beach.

[desertrat77]

Swam the mile twice this summer, one each at two different summer camps.  Lake swimming for both.  I wore a pair of those BSA combo shorts/swim suit.  I think they are on clearance.  Worked fine.

I've done the mile swim several times over the years.   Just once in a pool.  Horrible.  I'll swim in a lake any day, regardless of conditions.

Coldest mile swim:  Mirror Lake, Camp Gorsuch, AK.  Very cold, even in the summer. 

[mashmaster]

2 hours ago, desertrat77 said:

Swam the mile twice this summer, one each at two different summer camps.  Lake swimming for both.  I wore a pair of those BSA combo shorts/swim suit.  I think they are on clearance.  Worked fine.

I've done the mile swim several times over the years.   Just once in a pool.  Horrible.  I'll swim in a lake any day, regardless of conditions.

Coldest mile swim:  Mirror Lake, Camp Gorsuch, AK.  Very cold, even in the summer. 

I agree the lake is way better, you lose your mind in the pool.

And....   BRRRRRR a lake in AK....

[SSF]

17 hours ago, DadandGareth said:

For my scout, I decided that a one mile freestyle-only swim in a lap pool with no gliding after flip turns (so swimming the entire distance) and no stopping is a high achievement for a 12 year old, worthy of the mile swim badge.

I'm not sure how you can tell a scout not to glide after doing a flip turn...? Every recognized swimming stroke involves gliding, some strokes more than others, but every single stoke has a very pronounced glide element to it. You would essentially be telling the scout to swim in an inefficient manner as opposed to swimming in an efficient manner.

I see what the objective is though. It might be more practical to have the scout swim the perimeter of the pool and just not allow him to push off the wall, or the bottom course. 

Of the six summer camps I've been to, four had pools and that's how they conducted the mile; i.e. the swimmers were not permitted to use the walls to push off and had to swim in a large oval around the perimeter. The camps that did not have pools obviously held their mile swim in the open water of the lake. 

The BSA should definitely add "continuous" to the requirement. I think that's a loophole they did not consider. The idea of a kid swimming 100 yards every Saturday over a 17 week period, and then claiming that he completed the mile swim at the end of that 17 week period is absurd.

Also, not to nitpick, but while freestyle is generally regarded as the front crawl stroke, there is no such thing as the 'freestyle stroke'. Freestyle is an event in competitive swimming in which the swimmer can swim in any manner that they choose...hence 'free' style.

Since front crawl is swam fairly universally in the freestyle event though, 'freestyle' has become synonymous with the front crawl. Just sharing as a fun fact.

Edited October 24, 2018 by SSF

[qwazse]

25 minutes ago, SSF said:

I'm not sure how you can tell a scout not to glide after doing a flip turn...? Every recognized swimming stroke involves gliding, some strokes more than others, but every single stoke has a very pronounced glide element to it. You would essentially be telling the scout to swim in an inefficient manner as opposed to swimming in an efficient manner. ...

If you aren't worried about time, you can maximize your glide time off of each flip turn to the point you only need a few strokes to the end of the lane. (I had a lot of pool time in phys Ed class to figure this stuff out -- a couple of years after I swam my first mile.) But that's not very sporting.

49 minutes ago, SSF said:

... The BSA should definitely add "continuous" to the requirement. I think that's a loophole they did not consider. The idea of a kid swimming 100 yards every Saturday over a 17 week period, and then claiming that he completed the mile swim at the end of that 17 week period is absurd.

 

That's just what we need, one more adjective to ward off the one in ten thousand slackers who would try to pass off 17 100 yard swims as a mile. As anyone here heard of a scout pulling such shenanigans?

[Monkeytamer]

On ‎10‎/‎14‎/‎2013 at 10:47 AM, skeptic said:

Ultimately, you always know if you actually did the real thing; and you live with your self judgments.

This is an old thread, but I found this sentence to be the crux of the matter.  I did the mile swim last summer in the ocean at Emerald Bay Scout Camp.  It wasn't for any patch, or for accolades or to prove anything to anybody but me.  I did it because I wanted to see if I could do it and I had the chance to do it in the ocean.  I'm 51 and out of shape, so it took a long time (1:15 to be exact), but I made it and that's all that matters.  You can't keep from aging, but you can keep from getting old.  If you do that, living with your self judgements isn't so bad.  

[perdidochas]

On 10/23/2018 at 9:58 PM, qwazse said:

If you aren't worried about time, you can maximize your glide time off of each flip turn to the point you only need a few strokes to the end of the lane. (I had a lot of pool time in phys Ed class to figure this stuff out -- a couple of years after I swam my first mile.) But that's not very sporting.

That's just what we need, one more adjective to ward off the one in ten thousand slackers who would try to pass off 17 100 yard swims as a mile. As anyone here heard of a scout pulling such shenanigans?

Well, when I did my mile swim practices, one of the scouts thought that the mile swim was done that way--that you could swim the mile a few hundred yards at a time. He quit when told he had to do it in a single swim.