Ideally you should be premedicating before going in to swim. Salt water pools are awesome if chlorine bugs you but you're absolutely right that if you start feeling chest tightness you need to take your puffer. It's not cheating. Your puffer works 100% better when your airways are still open-ish and it can actually get deep in your lung, whereas if you're really miserable the medication can't penetrate as deeply due to the existing obstruction.
I should have clarified in my post - I always premedicate for swimming. Which is often enough, but not always. Sometimes I do need an inhaler break. Thanks!
In that case, I find that if I start feeling tight, that's usually an indicator that I need to slow down. I'm going too fast or working too hard, and I need to scale it back. Trying to keep going at that pace will just result in an attack no matter how much puffer I have in me. Inhaler breaks are helpful but they also speed your heart up and take you out of warmed-up mode without a cooldown, and this comes with its own bad side effects -- I usually see if I can get through it by slowing down to a recovery pace and exercising some breath control
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