I hear you have some swimming issues. How is your stroke/breathing? Is it just a far of the open water that ails you? I will make an assumption and assume you are a beginner swimmer all together, correct me if I am wrong though. Good news is that you have the entire winter/off season to prepare your swim technique and evolve your skills into a race ready format by spring. Start with a short distance you can handle, by this I mean swimming continuously with out getting to winded, so if it is 100, 200, 300m...etc, start there. Do this swim once a week, if you can do 3 sessions of low intensity sets a week that would be great. The other 2 sessions should be form/technique focused. Here are a few suggestions for you.

1.) Breathing technique(1) - put a tennis ball under you chin and swim 25m(1 length), while trying to keep it there while breathing. Rest 30sec and continue 10-20 lengths. Breathing technique(2) - this is called front quadrant swimming and is very beneficial to triathletes. Swim with and exaggerated catch up stroke, by this I mean, do not start the pull phase of the stroke till both arms are out in front of you. When you begin the pull phase(remember to bend your elbow and feel the water against your fore arm) roll a little more than usual to that side, do the same for both sides. This will force you to swim streamlined, and will teach you to breath more on the side and not turn your head too far forward. Added benefit, this will prevent you from getting the snot kicked out of you in the chaotic swim starts of the race, since you have both arms in front to feel the kicking feet in front of you.

2.) Pull phase - swim with closed fists for 1/2 of a length, keep it slow and controlled to feel the water against your fore arm. Open you fist and swim normal for the remainder of the length to feel the benefit of the bended the elbow during the pull phase. Repeat 10-20 times with a 30 sec rest between.

3.) Kicking - grab a kick board and kick 25m at a time(the first length should be extremely slow so you pull a hamstring), thrust from the hip with a slight bend in the knee and point your toes away from you.

4.) Pull bouy - swim 100-what ever distance you can handle with a pull bouy to get use to the streamline body position, this will let you practice your breathing technique as well.

Build up gradually over the winter to about 1000m for a sprint distance and about 2000-2500m for an olympic. Once a good base is established with decent form you can then start swimming speed sets.

Good luck

-Anthony

The previous replies all contain great recommendations - any or all of them will help you. My approach to training and racing is a little less technical. If the tennis ball under the chin thing works for you, go for it. I overcame my apprehension of open water swimming by swimming in open water. Sounds simple, but I made it a priority one summer and forced myself to swim a lot, and in a lot of different conditions (big lakes, small lakes, clear water, murky water, in crowds, alone, etc.) The other thing I did was to over-exaggerate my "roll" when taking a breath. When pulling my elbow out of the water, I would roll almost completely over onto my opposite side, so that pretty much the entire length of my side was pointing up to the sky. This really helped me overcome that fear and discomfort of having water fill your face when trying to get a breath. After a while, I felt more confident in the water. Eventually I was able to streamline my stroke and focus on finer points of efficient swimming....but for building my confidence and comfort level in the water there was nothing better.

There are countless techinques, approaches and training plans out there - all of them have merit. As long as the approach you select feeds that excitement and feeling of fun you described in your opening post, you'll do just fine.

Take care!