Rubber latex
These are generally the cheapest caps, and the most widely available in public swimming pools and online. I am not a fan, though. The latex, while being excellent at staying put once on, can be pretty uncomfortable if it slips or slides, and is almost always painful to take off. The material clings to your hair in a quite alarming way – great for stability, less great if you don’t like the feeling of your hair being ripped out from the root. They can also tear very easily, which is a pain if you only carry one cap at a time and you’re the sort of person who shoves such things in your handbag with keys and pens, or indeed if you have a fingernail that is anything less than perfectly filed. Oh, and don’t dry a cap of this sort in the sun, because it will either melt or, as has happened to me, leave its logo on your coffee table/laptop case/kitchen counter.
If asked to wear one for an organised event or course (which you often are, so that stewards or timekeepers can tell what speed or distance group you’re in), I now put the latex cap on top of my own silicone one, a system that has yet to fail me.
Silicone
Silicone is a price step up from basic latex, but is easily my preferred material. It’s stretchier, more durable and incomparably easier on the hair and hairline. I find silicone caps genuinely comfortable – and they have the added advantage of being easily available online in larger ‘long hair’ sizes if that’s what you need. But be warned! They can slip off hair that has conditioning oil or treatment on it, so make sure you pull the cap right down on to your face. They can also slip off bald heads, as I found out when swimming behind a group of men in the River Arun event. Anxious to protect the river wildlife, I shoved the ones I found up the legs of my wetsuit. All very worthy, but in the finish-line photographs I look as if I have catastrophic varicose veins.
The other advantage silicone gives me is warmth. I wore two caps together during winter’s coldest months and felt no need for anything else. They are also available in a bobble design, which retains more heat. They shouldn’t cost you more than about £7 at most, which still works out cheaper than a neoprene cap. A favourite brand for me is the tiny independent Under Aqua, which has lovely designs and is working on a range for longer hair, as well as other accessories.
Neoprene
Neoprene caps are for long-distance cold-water outdoor swimming. Neoprene, the fabric that wetsuits are made of, is thicker and a far better insulator than either rubber or latex, and these caps usually come with a thin chin strap to keep them on. I have never felt the need for one, as I have pretty thick hair, but several of my local swimming friends wouldn’t be without theirs, particularly the ones who swim for up to forty-five minutes at a time even in the coldest weather. I suggest you only invest in one of these if that’s the standard you’re aiming for, as they are significantly more expensive than other caps on the market. They do create a charming 1930s Riviera chic, though. Very Grace Kelly in High Society.
Nylon
Nylon caps are often worn under others, as they’re the softest of all on the hair. They don’t have great grip, though, so if you’re going any great distance, or swimming in choppy water, they may not be ideal. The seams and the cloth-like fabric can make you look a tiny bit like a bank robber who’s put a pair of tights on his head only to lose the legs part. It is worth noting that they are the most environmentally friendly option, given that they use so much less plastic.
Socks and gloves
My neoprene socks absolutely changed my swimming life, and I can honestly say that I don’t think I would even have made it to the water’s edge if I hadn’t had a pair for my first winter outdoors. And they are the cheapest item of swimming kit I own! Mine are 3mm neoprene ankle socks with no other bells or whistles, but – and it’s an important but! – I was advised to buy a size smaller than I would for normal socks, and that is advice I pass on to you. Nothing will slow and frustrate you more, especially if you’re cold and want to keep moving, than a pair of socks that balloon with water and make kicking and manoeuvring yourself feel harder than it needs to be. What is really important is the seam around your ankle – as with wetsuits, if the socks are hard to get on and off, you’ve bought the right size. When it comes to entering and exiting the water, I would never have had the nerve to tread over the sharp rocky edges of a tarn without mine, nor the stomach to squelch through the mud and roots on the side of a lake. But with my seven-quid socks on, I feel invincible.
The situation is pretty much the same for gloves – you want neoprene, and you want a good fit. Be careful buying online, though, as you don’t want to take a wrong turn and end up with either webbed training gloves (more of which later) or very thick gloves designed for fishermen or windsurfers, who don’t have their hands ploughing through the water constantly.
Gloves can also come with wrist straps, and it can take a few goes before you get the perfect alignment of wetsuit/glove/strap/tracking device, so don’t blow the budget on a dream pair the week before a big swim; give yourself the chance to try it all on together before you need to get in the water.
There are more advanced versions of both socks and gloves – some hardier swimmers who are regularly treading more rugged terrain choose to wear small neoprene shoes that look like slippers, with rubberised bottoms and a pull cord to keep them tight. They’re great if your journey to the water is adventurous, or you want something you can wear for water sports too, but they’re not the most comfortable for a long swim. Similarly, getting a pair of touch-sensitive gloves so that you can answer your phone at a moment’s notice is probably not worth the extra cash unless you’re a doctor on call.
Goggles
If I were forced to forgo all items of kit except one, I would choose to save my goggles every time. As with all exercise, it’s not what you look like to others that is important, but what you see when you’re out there moving – and it’s your goggles that let you see. By protecting your eyes from salt water, chlorine and bright sunlight, they enable visibility whatever the conditions. Whether it’s the clock at the end of the pool, the jetty at the edge of the lake, or the fish at the bottom of the ocean, it’s always worth being able to see what is important or inspiring to you, so it’s crucial to get your goggles right.
The most important thing to remember about goggles is that they do not need to feel tight in order to be working effectively. The nature of the rubbery suction surround is that it’s working best when simply resting on your face. In fact, when you’re trying them on, out of the water, you should be able to simply rest the goggles on your face for a good 10-20 seconds with the seal intact. Indeed, it’s best to try them on without relying on the straps for guidance. If you press, pull and tighten the lenses and straps, you’re simply creating tension that is more likely to break the seal if the position of your face changes. I did not understand this. For a long time. Long enough to associate goggles with pain and inconvenience for the best part of a year. Don’t do what I did: instead, invest a little time and perhaps some trial and error in getting a pair that will sit happily on your face for a good uninterrupted hour or two in the water. Don’t suffer like I did: to want well-fitting eyewear is not an overambitious goal – the dream pair is out there!
What you want are goggles that fit your face shape and the size of your eye socket. Some seals sit right on the curve of your skeletal structure, and that is never going to work. Some swimmers prefer to feel the seal right in the eye socket; others like them up as far as their eyebrows and down as far as their cheeks. Back when I was eternally fiddling with straps, in a state of ever-tightening panic, I loved the large Aquasphere Vista style because they didn’t leave my eye sockets red raw. I now swear by the Zoggs Predator Flex, as do most swimmers I know. They are particularly good at bending, from the nose, to sit well on the sides of the face – perfect for those who don’t have a wide, flat face.
The goggles I wish I was cool enough to wear are the small, mirrored Swedish style that require individual assembly. They have no seal at al
l, only plastic lenses that come all the way around the side of the eye, and are held together by a latex nose and head strap. They allow for better peripheral vision, they come in cool colours, and they make you look like a steampunk superhero, but they are also prone to much more leakage in the water.
Second only to leakage is the annoyance of goggles fogging up. This condensation is caused by the difference in temperature between goggles, water and face. There are various techniques people use to prevent this – some hold their goggles in the water for ten or twenty seconds to bring the temperature of the two together. This is particularly recommended if your goggles are especially cold from the journey to the water, though it’s also worth making sure that your face is not too hot as well. There are plenty of anti-fog sprays on the market, but most people who use anything on the lenses swear by a tiny, tiny dab of baby shampoo. This creates a very thin film across the lens that prevents the condensation from settling. My chosen technique has proven both cheap and infallible: spit. Some people actually spit into the lens, but I prefer simply to lick around it.
Vaseline/wetsuit lubricant
Salt water stings. Salt water rubbing against a seam over time takes stinging and ratchets it up to a previously unimagined level of pain. Vaseline will always be your friend if you’re in a swimsuit. Suncream provides its own barrier between skin and salt water, but over time, and under intense sun, it simply isn’t enough. If you’re going on a swimming trip, take a tub of Vaseline, as well as a separate pair of rubber or latex gloves for applying it with. The last thing you want is to protect yourself from the abrasions of salt water only to smear grease across your goggles a moment later. Very long-distance swimmers also use lanolin or Aquaphor.
Wetsuit lubricant is easier to apply, generally coming in a sort of stick or tube akin to roll-on deodorant. It is used on the seams, particularly around the neck and underarm area, where there is most movement when you are in the water. Vaseline is not ideal for use on rubber as it can cause perishing, but using some sort of lubricant is worth it as the repeated turning of your head, for example, will cause chafe marks at your hairline over a period of time.
Liquid rubber
It sounds disgusting and it smells even worse, but this is a product that can significantly lengthen the life of your wetsuit. The biggest brand is Black Witch, and it comes in cute cartoony packaging with what looks disconcertingly like Meg of Meg and Mog fame on the tube. It is as magic as anything Meg ever did, as it can repair snags and scratches on coated wetsuits. If, like me, you find that getting a wetsuit on requires significant thigh-level yanking, there is a very real chance that one day you will put your fingernail through the neoprene coating. This is extremely annoying – not merely aesthetically, but because once the rubber is compromised, the chance of cold water getting into the suit is hugely increased. Usually what happens is that a small slice of coating peels back from the wetsuit, and remains there, flapping about.
Liquid rubber can mend this – you simply need to take a matchstick, cotton bud or similarly sized tool, and dip it into the tube. You don’t need a lot; a blob the size of a match head is plenty. You spread the liquid into the underside of your gouge and wait for it to turn opaque – slightly white, like false eyelash glue. This is your cue to smooth the coating down, fitting it back into the slot from which it was originally ruptured and using any oozing leftovers as an extra seal. Ta-da! Your wetsuit lives to see another day. It is worth noting that an adaptation of this technique can be used to mend seams that have come unstitched. It is messier, and you need to create a lovely smooth edge to avoid chafing, but it certainly keeps the wetsuit together.
Tow floats
These look like bright neon flotation devices but should not be mistaken as such; they are – and have been tested as – bags and bags alone. Waterproof and inflatable, with a large sealed pocket for a swimmer’s possessions, they vary in size. The smallest can just about squeeze in a phone, a key and tenner; while the largest are roomy enough for an entire outfit. You fill and seal the sack, then inflate the front and back pouches around it and attach it via a cord around the waist. And voilà, it is ready to be pulled effortlessly along behind you in the water. Mine sits somewhere around my feet once I’m swimming, and I’m only aware of it when I occasionally touch the cord with a toe. There is no sense of drag. I love my tow float, but I have found that swimmers are divided on their merits.
One of the arguments against tow floats is that they create a false sense of security in the water – you can assume you’re visible to passing boats, water-skiers and fishermen, as well as to lifeguards. You also have the sensation that there is a buoyancy aid in the water with you, in case of incident or danger. Also, their bright colour can upset some of the very hardiest of outdoor swimmers, who find them a harsh interruption to the natural landscape.
Provided you accept the limitations of the tow float as a safety aid, and are well aware that that is not its designed purpose, they make fantastically useful bags – with the added bonus of some increased visibility. Sure, the organic nature of outdoor swimming is compromised if we’re dragging mobile phones, route trackers and a full change of clothes with us every time. Part of swimming’s attraction is the sense of weightless freedom in the water. But – and it’s a big but – a lot of us don’t like swimming back and forth over a long distance. Whether it’s upstream, against the tide or simply the psychological sense of turning back into your own wake, heading home the way you came can sometimes take a little joy from an outdoors swim. With a tow float, you can take a pair of flip-flops, some light clothing, some change and a key with you, and return home on dry land.
Event jackets
Designed for swimmers, surfers and all cold-water enthusiasts, these items tread a fine line between being wonderfully useful and a waste of money. They range from towelling robes – adult versions of the sort of poncho children wear on the beach when they’re fresh out of the water – to more durable waterproofed versions. Their websites and marketing material will try to convince you of their advanced windproof technology or powerful drying capabilities, but the main advantage of all of them is the same: they afford you a level of dignity and protection from the elements when you’re getting changed out of swimwear on the beach, round the side of a harbour or behind your car in a Lake District car park.
A towelling robe is great for summer – you can pop it on over your head and rub yourself dry without looking like a niche burlesque act, sliding your swimwear down and pulling your warm clothes on with relative decorum. The waterproof versions are made of much sturdier stuff, and have an appropriately sturdy price tag. These usually zip up the front, so you can also wear them waterside before or between swims. They are much more specific to cold-water swimmers, as the thick waterproof coating (over a sort of fleecy inner layer that sits against the skin) does a great job of protecting you from wind, rain and spray from waves breaking close to the shore.
While the towelling robes, of which the brand leader is Robie Robes, create a playful, childlike look and feel, the waterproof ones – allowing for the double layer and space to change beneath them – are enormous. The brand leader here is Dryrobe, although cheaper alternatives are available online. Unzipped, they can make the wearer look regal, intimidating and a bit daft: a sort of grey, watery hip-hop superstar draped in furs. That you can get branded versions makes it worse – or better, depending on your perspective.
Once, at a supposedly fun community cold-water swimming event, I saw a gang of middle-aged white men wearing event jackets in their team colours and aggressively discussing tactics. I find these ‘must get all the kit’ believers a bit ridiculous; personally, I am often happier in a bin liner and a moth-eaten jumper, since I don’t mind it getting filthy should I drop it on the pebbles. At that particular event, these competitive chaps were all put in the shade by a lady who had simply sewn two large swimming towels together and stitched a hem around a piece of elastic at one end. The towels appeared to date f
rom about 1987, and even then the mauve and avocado tones suggested they were bin-ends at the House of Fraser sale. She was wearing her creation over one shoulder, looking like Michelle Pfeiffer in Scarface, and looked blissfully happy. Once the event started, she casually beat several of those owners of bespoke robes. Expensive post-swim kit might be deliciously comfortable, but it doesn’t guarantee an unbeatable swimming style.
Floats
Back when I believed my legs were the key to successful swimming, I spent hours going up and down pools, kicking hard. Since I became enlightened, discovering that the leg kick is more of a rudder and a spare engine than the main machine, I don’t feel any need for a float. Most pools have them, should you fancy a bit of leg work and are not appalled by the bite marks of small children who have used them before you.
Pull buoys
I spent years calling these ‘pool boys’, enchanted by their cheeky name but clueless as to what they were for. Once informed, I found them one of the most useful training tools of the lot. They are essentially floats for your legs, to help you train your arms. But where standard rectangular floats let your legs fall into the water, these wedge between them, helping to keep them high and in the position you should always be swimming in. This in turn helps you to focus on your arm stroke without struggling to keep parallel to the water. They also slow you down slightly, allowing you to work out the intricacies of what to do with your arms while stopping you from getting too breathless. If you swim in a pool that doesn’t have them, I’d recommend buying one for training. And if you swim in a pool that does have them … now you know what they do.
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