PRINCE TOP TRAINING TIP: The Night Open Water Swim with Container Ships

Once you have learned to swim using the Prince Method and not the "stupid idiot" technique known as Total Immersion (see below on Prince’s method vs Terry Loughlin’s TI Method 12/09), competitive open water swimming then becomes all about “navigation, navigation and navigation”. Prince compels you to undertake a weekly 3,000 meter pitch black night swim around your local container port. In the dark water you pick up and learn a bat-esque mental positioning skill system to navigate between way-points, thus perfect for triathlon buoy to buoy swim preparation. Prince recommends his local Odaiba Container Port as generally there are a lot of drift items such as old nets and floating diesel cans that act as if the usual triathlon entanglement with other swimmers. Luckily the only boats which can get in your way are large ships which wash you off the bow with a significant wake wave and thus it is impossible to be run over and sliced up by a propeller the size of a small motorway service station. For this reason, ignore the ships, use the new swimming MP3 player made by Finus, stay in your endorphin trance music zone, and enjoy only the sudden surprise opportunities of body surfing down a steel hull from time to time. It is like being hit by a freak wave in every triathlon. According to founder of “the Lets Swim at Night with Container Ships Concept”, Prince trained athlete Jiro Kashiwagi comments: "one can also take comfort that the Japanese custom of whale and mammal harpooning is banned in ports". Never carry a marker light with you as this is contrary to international maritime treaties which states that only ships and land hazards can be illuminated. Once you have mastered the mental radar you will find on race day that you will never have to use TI’s “sighting” method (head raising to see buoys) again, saving you an estimated 176 seconds on a 1500M open water course. "Sighting is very anti hydrodynamic as one sinks and stops dead in water" the great poodle states. Above pictures are looking towards Tokyo from Odaiba container terminal, Tokyo; (left top) is Prince and CP in wetsuits waiting for pitch black, and (right bottom) is Prince and CP later that night, completely unseen swimming across a shipping lane. Prince concludes: "it seems as if you will die in the shipping lane, but the bastards just are no match for the Prince Method - go for it...."