Courtesy of WOWSA, Huntington Beach, California.

Decades ago, Greta Andersen used to train for her professional marathon swims and solo swims across the English Channel, Catalina Channel and Molokai Channel in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Long Beach, California.

She used to pull and kick massively long ocean workouts, sometimes escorted by paddlers, sometimes swimming solo.

Since many of our male masters swimming teammates love putting on hand paddles and wearing a pull buoy to rip off a fast pool swimming set, we wondered how cool would it be to have an open water race that allowed hand paddles and pull buoys?

While racing with hand paddles and pull buoys in an ocean would be interesting, it might even be more entertaining to have a race in a flat-water venue.

If some open water races allow wetsuits and others have fin divisions or offer breaststroke heats, why not hand paddles and pull buoys?

Just for fun.

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