(Jeez people, can we lose this hermaphroditic he/she, him/her garbage and just agree on "it"?)
When you are about to overtake a swimmer you are, in fact, drafting off that person for a little while (drafting is where you enter, and are carried along by, the stream of water that the swimmer in front of you has already started moving - you benefit from the work that swimmer has already done, you swim faster with less effort). Then you are ready to swim past it (I'm referring to the other swimmer, remember our agreement? - this is the kind of stuff you have to put up with when you insist on being politically correct.). At this point you swim out of the draft of water the other swimmer was gracious enough to get moving for you and into his/her (sorry, its kind of a habit these days) wake and turbulence. You now are fighting more resistance than ever before. Unless the wake is big enough to body surf on you will find yourself having to work quite a bit harder just to keep from slowing down. |