Courtesy of Jorge Paulo Pereira of 3 Iron Sports and organizer of the Swim Challenge Cascais.

When you sit back in the pack with others ahead of you, it is much easier to determine the optimal course to take.

You can decide if you want to be an outlier and stay far right or far left.

Or you can decide a moderate and go straight up the middle.

Or you can be a risk-taker and swim the course at the extremes, swimming way wide of the rest of the pack. You can try to garner every tidal advantage and current-assist whenever possible. The wavier and rougher the conditions are, the greater chances that you will either succeed wildly or fail miserably.

And that is some of the joy and excitement of open water swimming.

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