So you're ready to get out there and do some open water swimming to prepare for your next triathlon? Before you go dipping into your local body of water, keep these tips in mind:

I've got news for you. The former swimmers in the triathlon community are sandbagging. We have formed a conspiracy to keep swim splits ridiculously slow, compared to what we could do "back in the day." We can do this because we have a stroke and you don't.

Most sports come with injuries to accompany them. Although swimming is, by most standards, not a sport associated with high risk of injury, it does have it's own problems. By far the biggest source of sidelining swimming injuries is the shoulder.

Training for a distance swimming event is very different from training for a run or cycling event. When training for a marathon, for example, you would start out with short runs, and gradually increase your mileage each week as you build up endurance. You may work on sprints to increase speed, but overall the goal is to run further or for a longer period of time to get ready for the event.

One of the most common questions I hear as a coach is, "Should I use fins?" The answer depends largely on your goals, your skill level and the type of fins.

In freestyle, it is important to have some kind of kick to help you rotate from side to side as you swim, and to give you a small bit of propulsion. However, 90-95% of your propulsion in swimming will come from your upper body and how much you can rotate to slide through the water.

You may have had coaches that make you count strokes throughout the workout, either by mixing it into drill sets, the main set, or at the end of workout. Some coaches recommend making a habit of always keeping track of your stroke count. As a coach of distance swimmers and triathletes, I believe stroke counting is a necessary part of most swimming workouts.

One of the most common wonders of the swimming world is, should you use alternate-side, or bilateral breathing?

Andrea Fisher writes: A lot of people place themselves at the start of a triathlon in relationship to how fast they swim. The fastest swimmers always line up at the front, and the slower swimmers at the back. However there is a way to pick up some free speed during the swim, and it's all dependent on where you line up.