4-Eyes Underwater: Prescription Goggles for Swimming

We're off to our spring vacation in a week and it's going to be somewhere warm south of the border for sure with lots and lots of pools in the resort. Since I wear glasses, swimming has been a pain in the neck because I either had to swim basically blind underwater or I wore my glasses while wading around and would put them on the side of the pool whenever I wanted to swim a lap or two. The problem was that I was always worried that someone would STEP on them or kick them in the pool by accident and I'd be blind for the rest of the day...or week...until I got a replacement set of eyeglasses.

But last summer, I found out that there are prescription swimming googles that are pre-manufactuered with different prescription strengths. Basically, like the "reading glasses" that you see on sale at CVS that come in pre-manufactured strengths, but this time, they're goggles! Awesome.

So I just picked-up a pair of Speedo corrective lens goggles on Amazon for our trip. My previous pair of Body Glove ones were ok -- the where black and had the corrective lenses which were great. But the downside was that they were NOT anti-fog lenses. While they cost the same as the new ones I just ordered on Amazon.com, they used to fog up all the time.

I'm soooo looking forward to swimming with the Speedo goggles to arrive.

I also learned something about prescriptions. In order to figure out what DIOPETER I had to order (strength), I found a quick formula to calculate it based on my regular glasses prescriptions:

SPHERE + (0.5 x Cylinder) = DIOPETER for goggles

i.e. -3.25 + (1/2 -2.5) = -4.5

Although my left I is weaker, I'm ordering the strength for the lesser strength needed of the two eyes to minimize strain on the eyes. Some companies recommend that you buy one pair of prescription goggles for each eye and put one lens from each together to make a "custom" pair that is closer to what your eyes really need. You'd have to check the actual model to see if they come apart easily (the straps of course come off easily usually, it's the middle plastic connector that you have to be worried about). But from my experience last year with the BodyGlove swimming goggles, I don't need to mix and match.