Teenage pool swimmer Fiona Goh jumped into the Pacific Ocean for the first time on a wintery cold morning on January 1st. The jolt of cold water didn’t surprise her; it merely served to rev her up for more.

Since that January morning, she heads down to the California coast every weekend. Like many of her marathon swimming heroes and heroines, she relishes in the 54°-58°F (12°-14°C) water and never seems to get cold or tire.

But she is being wisely counseled by Scott Zornig of the Santa Barbara Channel Swimming Association to take on the sport of open water swimming in reasonable bite-sized chunks.

There is no rush. She enjoys it and a gradual introduction to longer and more grueling swims will come in due time.

This coming weekend, she will enter her first competitive open water race: the 2.5-mile Orange County Open Water Swim in Lake Mission Viejo. With that flat-water lake swimm under her belt, she will re-group and next attempt a marathon swim: an 12.4-mile traverse between Anacapa Island (shown on left) to California in Ventura County.

Stroke-by-stroke, step-by-step, Goh’s journey in the open water world has just begun.

Copyright © 2012 by Open Water Source