Sir Karl Raimund Popper was a professor at the London School of Economics and is considered one of the greatest philosophers of science of the 20th century.

We believe he precisely and inadvertently described the difference between pool swimming and open water swimming when he described a world that can be divided into two categories: clocks and clouds.

Clocks are neat, orderly systems. Clouds are highly irregular, disorderly and largely unpredictable.

Clocks are similar to a pool: rectangular bodies of water with lane lines and black lines in a controlled environment. Clouds are similar to open bodies of water where dynamic water conditions and climatic elements are the rule rather than the exception.

Occasionally, pool swimmers and novice triathletes enter the world of open water swimming with hopes that everything will run like clockwork. However, experienced athletes know the world of the open water swimming is the aquatic equilavent to clouds.

Copyright © 2010 by Steven Munatones