Triathlon Tip – Catching the Draft on the Swim Leg
As I’ve written before, many beginner triathletes are quite anxious about the swim. I’m willing to bet that every single one of you will swim too hard and use way too much energy right off the bat, no matter the distance of the triathlon.
What if I told you there was an easier way? No, I’m not going to tell you to skip the swim workouts that are in your training plan. I am going to tell you how to make the swim less taxing, easier, and less worrisome. OK, got your attention?
Good. Many of you who train solely in a pool will not have had the opportunity to experience this yet, but swimming directly behind someone, or just off their left of right arms, offers huge energy savings. Much like the draft you get when you are directly behind another cyclist, which is illegal in most U.S. triathlons, you get kind of a free ride on someone else’s effort. On the swim leg, however, drafting is quite legal and quite wise.
Another benefit is the fact that if the person you are drafting off of is sighting well and swimming straight, you can turn your trust over to them and take a break on sighting, instead concentrating on swimming. Coming from experience, though, be sure to check every now and then just in case. I’ve been led off course many times by someone who I thought would pull me around.
So, you ask, how do I position myself to take advantage of this affect. Everyone is starting off together and there is going to be mayhem!
2008 Ironman Florida Swim Start
I will spare butchering Rudyard Kipling’s poem, but “he who can keep his head when those around are losing theirs ….” Same thing on the swim leg of a triathlon. If you can remain calm, cool and collected, you are in a far better mental state than about 90 percent of the rest of the folks choosing their positions and sight lines in the water.
Usually, the best swimmers will line up in the front, and everyone else will fill in behind. I’m going to suggest something you might find ridiculous — line up right up front, not in the back and not way over to the right or left. Get right into the mix. You will often find that because the better swimmers are usually here, there is not nearly as much tussling as further back.
If you want to catch the draft of the first, really fast group, line up right behind whom you think might be the fastest.
If your goal is to catch the second, bigger group, line up two more rows deep. Line up right with everyone though, right where the best sight line is. Usually right down the buoy line is the way to go, unless of course there is a current, then use your best judgment. If a current is moving to the right, you will need to compensate for that by swimming a little left.
Back to the matter at hand, though. If you can stand a little physical contact for about two or three minutes, things should calm down and you can start looking for the pair of feet that you want to stay on. Learn to follow the bubbles from the turbulence the swimmer in front of you is churning up. If you happen to tap them on the foot, no foul, just try not to do it too much as it can be annoying and your ride might decide to try and drop you.
As I mentioned at the beginning, you can also get a good draft when you are beside someone. However, you want them to be in front and you want to be kind of flanking them in a wing formation right beside their arm pit.
If you find yourself in this situation, you will need to worry about sighting a bit more, but still, there is a big benefit energy wise. Either way, right behind or off to the side, will give you the opportunity to potentially hang with faster people, resulting in a faster swim split.
If you have the opportunity to do an open water swim in training, try it out. Get a friend who’s faster than you and try to stay in their feet. You will know pretty quickly how well you are fairing. 
Triathlon Tip – Be Strong at the End
One thing that many triathletes struggle with is going way too hard on the swim or the bike leg, or both. They are then forced to walk the last half of a given triathlon.
It’s a tough lesson to learn, but if you learn it early, you will finish well ahead of many of those who blow past you in the early miles of the bike. You can ruin your entire race by swimming to hard. You can ruin your race by biking too hard over the first half of the ride.
You have to throw your ego out the window in order to be successful at triathlon. It’s hard to maintain your composure and ride at your pace/heart rate/wattage when your are being passed by seemingly everyone over the first half of the bike.
However, if you ride within your capabilities, not above, and save your energy for the run, you will be in for a big surprise. Usually over the last miles of the bike leg, you will start passing all of those people back who went by you earlier.
Also, if you are prepared and have ridden within yourself, your run is going to be much more enjoyable, and sometimes even fun. You will find that the race that had seemingly passed you by starts coming back to you.
Being strong on the run also gives you a psychological boost because you start passing a massive amount of racers who are physically and mentally spent. You get a big boost of confidence when you are running right by so many folks, and you often will get cheered on by both athletes and spectators for being so strong so late in the race.
So, if you want to be successful, especially in your first few races, make sure you save a lot of energy for the run. You will be happy you did. I guarantee that if you wait until the run to let it all hang out, you will have a good race relative to your capability. You also might even beat many more experienced triathletes who have simply gone way too hard too early in the race.
Give it a shot and let me know how it turns out. Remember, as in all things, be strong at the end!
Become a Slippery Swimmer In Three Months
If you are new to the sport of triathlon, chances are good that you haven’t swam since you were a kid. Chances may also be good that you have never done lap-swimming in a pool, ever. You liked the game of Marco Polo and diving for quarters better than swimming back and forth.
I would also be willing to bet that there were several of you good-spirited folks, like me back in the day, who signed up for your first triathlon at the first of the year. It was only after you hit the payment button that you thought about the swimming part. You perhaps have been to the pool and actually tried to swim the required 300 yards in the particular sprint race and then you promptly found yourself in a calamitous battle with the water that resulted in nothing but splashing and a big-time oxygen debt that is rapidly coming due.
Swimming is a Skill
Well, I’m here to tell you, you can improve your swimming and you can do it very rapidly. You see the human body was not designed to operate well in the water. It is not natural to us and most of us don’t have the natural gifts like Michael Phelps, like a 6-4 frame, gigantic feet, really big hands and long arms to make it come easy.
What you have to realize, however, is that swimming is mostly skill and even a person that appears completely out of shape on the outside can in fact swim laps around you. I’ve seen it time and again in the pool. Little kids leaving you in the dust in the time-trial start of a pool-based sprint triathlon can be particularly disconcerting.
Most experts, and everything I’ve read, would say that swimming is 70-75 percent technique and maybe 25-30 percent aerobic conditioning. Which basically means that you can be a really in shape runner or cyclist or a really good basketball player, but you can also be a really terrible swimmer. The good news is that you can “learn” to swim fast by teaching your body to move in the same optimal way each time you take a stroke.
Technique Is Key
There are many options out there for improving your swimming in a big hurry but none of them skip the first step of learning the proper technique. Going to the pool and swimming without focusing your technique is going to be worthless. It’s going to be hard and you are not going to get any better because of the effort.
After about two years and my first six triathlons (three sprints one year, then two sprints and an international distance the next), I was tired of coming out the water near the back of the pack. In fact, my first triathlon saw me have to stand up in the middle of my 300-yard swim huffing and puffing, wondering just what I had gotten myself into. That’s another story for another post.
During this “learning” phase, I had experimented with Total Immersion. I bought the book Triathlon Swimming Made Easy and started in with drills. I was not dedicated and I was not swimming much, so I never really improved. My technique was terrible and I was taking probably 30 strokes per 25 yards, wearing myself out before I could actually get any real practice in. Muscle memory is huge in swimming, and if you don’t swim, you will lose it, much like you would lose your golf swing when you haven’t played in five years.
Triathlon swim starts can be a bit disconcerting!
So, after a few false starts, I saw a sign for swimming lessons at the on-campus aquatic facility at Duke University, my former place of employment. It turns out the assistant swim coach there, Dawn Chuck, was offering lessons for like $125 per semester. The classes were to be during lunch.
For about the whole semester, I pretty much had one-on-one time with Dawn because nobody else apparently wanted a collegiate coach giving you valuable advice. Simply having someone watching you swim is going to help you a great deal, even if they are not former Olympic swimmers from Jamaica, like Dawn was.
In about two months of consistent swimming, like three or four sessions per week, she had me move from finishing my races in the back of the pack to the front 10 percent of the pack. She gave me lots of drills and she told me what I was doing wrong. She gave me shorter sets, 2000-2500 yards to work on drills, rather than a bunch of yardage swimming intervals.
Surprisingly, the comments were very few, but they were always major flaws that were easy to fix. It was as simple as that. She had my strokes-per-length reduced from about 25 to about 14-15 in about three months.
Lessons are Biggest Bang for Buck
So, if you really want to improve your swimming, probably the easiest thing you can do is hire someone for a few private lessons. If you can’t afford that, I suggest you at least find a friend who is a good swimmer and have them watch you and tell you what you are doing wrong. It can be something as simple as lowering your head in the water or finishing your stroke or setting your catch. Either way, whatever you think you are doing in the water is probably not what you are actually doing, so be sure to follow through with this.
If you would prefer to be a hero and do it all on your own, it can be done, but it will take much longer to become decent. I consider decent a 1:30 100-yards. In a future post, I will give my take on Total Immersion, which I tried, as well as some other thoughts on triathlon-specific swim training. Until next time, give your swim training some thought and decide the best way to approach improvement based on your specific schedule. If you can afford it, hire a coach. If you can’t afford that, at least ask some kind looking fish at the pool to watch you swim 100 yards. You will be surpised at how a simple suggestion will completely change everything for you!
10 Reasons to Complete Your First Triathlon
Many people think that triathlons are the ultimate test of fitness. Images of Julie Moss staggering across the finish line in the 1982 Hawaii Ironman (see the video above) have probably contributed greatly to that idea. However, there are many triathlons that cover very short distances, relatively, so almost anyone can complete one. I have seen people of all sizes and shapes out there, including one particularly motivating individual at the 2007 Ironman Coeur d’Alene, Scott Rigsby, who was a double amputee. So, if you are considering getting involved in this great sport, consider a sprint or international distance race as your first. These are races that usually take 1-3.5 hours to complete. The following are a few reasons that you should do so:
1. All of your friends will think that you are in ridiculously good shape.
2. You will save money on going out at night, because you have to be up early to train.
3. You will have done something that probably 95 percent of the world’s population has not done.
4. Bodymarking is cool.
5. Races are very family friendly. Take the kids and let them cheer you on!
6. If you sign up around the first of the year, you have a built-in New Year’s Resolution.
7. Being able to swim 500 yards or so pretty easily is especially handy when your boat is sinking.
8. You will find out exactly what it feels like to run after riding a bike.
9. You will be cheered on, even by those that pass you.
10. You will be on top of the world when you cross that finish line!
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A Guide to Starting Out in Triathlon
Triathlon: Swim, Bike, Run!
Many people consider triathlons to be one of the great tests of human endurance. A lot of sports-minded folks have seen or heard about the Ironman World Championships in Kona through the tape-delayed broadcast shown around the first week of December on NBC (the race is actually in held in October).
The Ironman, a 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike, and 26.2-mile run, is certainly a distance that most people can’t relate to, at least at first. However, the good news is that there are several different distances of triathlons that the average person can enter and comfortably complete with only a few months of training. Read on to learn more about the sport of triathlon and the things you should know before you sign up for your first race.
Distances and terrain vary from race to race, however, there are generally four different distances of triathlons:
Sprint
- 500-800 yards of swimming (pool or lake)
- 12-15 miles of biking
- 5K, or 3.1 miles of running
International (Olympic) Distance
- 1650 yards of swimming (lake, ocean)
- 25-30 miles of biking
- 10K, or 6.2 miles of running
Half Ironman
- 1.2 miles (2,200 yards) of swimming (lake, ocean)
- 56 miles of biking
- 13.1 miles of running
Ironman
- 2.4 miles (4,400 yards) of swimming
- 112 miles of biking
- 26.2 miles of running
It’s fairly easy to see what you are getting in to with each distance. Most people opt to start out with a sprint as it offers just a taste of what you can expect from the sport. There are, however, athletes that I know personally that started with the Ironman right off the bat. This is not what I would recommend, but if you are daring, have at it. It all really depends of what kind of shape you are in now and what your experience level is with each sport.
Again, check your local rec departments or do a search on triathlons in your area. I guarantee you will find a race that is appealing in proximity, distance, and price of entry. A word to the wise though … triathlon is a growing sport and races fill up quickly. I live in North Carolina and our state triathlon series, the NCTS, opens up its races right at the first of year. So, be attentive to when your local race season starts and be prepared to sign on the dotted line when you see a race that fits your schedule and budget.
Things to Consider
1. General Fitness Level. What kind of shape are you in right now? Are you active, or have you been more watching than doing? If you are in reasonable cardiovascular shape, you can complete a sprint triathlon in as little as four months of effort, no problem. You will need to work up to about an hour’s worth of steady aerobic activity, be it walking, riding a stationary bike, elliptical machine, whatever. Just get moving and give the individual sports of swimming, biking and running a try to be sure you like them. If have run before, taken a spin class
2. Training Plans. There are many books and web sites that offer fabulous training plans that will suit any athlete looking to complete any distance or race. Many of the these are free, some you can buy memberships to, and you could even go as far as hire a coach. Depending on what your goals are, you have decision to make. How much money are you willing to throw at your new hobby? How well do you want to do in your first race? Are you racing to finish, or do you have a specific time goal in mind? All of these will factor in to what works best for you right now. I would choose a plan, follow it to the letter, and finish your first race. Once you go through the process once, you’ll be better prepared for the triathlon addiction that ensues.
3. Bike. What kind of bike will you ride? Do you have a road bike, a mountain bike, or anything with pedals? If you do, you’re ahead of the game. If you have chosen a local sprint or international distance for your first race, the bike really doesn’t matter that much. Many people complete triathlons on all sorts of bike. Do your first one and see if you like it before you go out and buy an expensive triathlon-specific bike. You can find cheap bikes all over Craigs List, eBay, etc., if you don’t have one. You can also simply borrow one from a friend and do some of your training on a stationary bike at the gym. Keep it as simple as possible for your first. You will also need a helmet. These range in price from an adequate one for $30 at Wal-Mart or a sleek $150 model at your local triathlon or bike shop.
4. Swimming. Do you have access to a swimming pool or a nearby lake that will enable you to work on your swimming? Many gyms have small pools that will suffice, as will local ponds, lakes, etc., in warmer months. Swimming is often an obstacle that scares people about triathlon. Rest assured, though, that many folks start out in triathlon without being able to swim, period. They take lessons and often quickly learn to be a more than adequate swimmer. If you haven’t done alot of swimming in your life, it’s a good idea to take some lessons, or look into one of the fabulous swimming programs like Total Immersion. Swimming is mostly technique, so getting it right the first time will pay huge dividends down the road.
5. Running. How far can you run now? Have you run previously, say, over the last five or six years? The answers to these questions will need to be assessed honestly by you. It is perfectly fine to walk in a triathlon. I have seen many elite athletes walking in short races over the years. Running comfortably across the finish line is much more fun, though, I can assure you. Be prepared to work up to about four miles of running. If you can’t cover that distance now, don’t worry. Running is something that is a skill, much more than people realize. You can learn to be a better runner in a few hours by learning about proper posture, foot strike, cadence, etc. A book that I found immensely helpful in improving my running is Chi Running, which teaches you proper form and how to run from your core.
6. Gym Membership. Do you have access to a gym with a pool and stationary bikes or spin classes? This is a great way to train for a sprint triathlon in the winter. Many clubs offer triathlon specific spin classes, swimming classes, etc. You can go to your gym and do mini-triathlons anytime. It also gives you a good sense of how riding on a bike, then running for awhile feels, all in the comfort of indoor heating! A short run on the treadmill following a spin class is an excellent workout, and you have a built-in transition area in the lockerroom. Consider a gym in your area for convenient access to equipment and possibly new training partners.
7. Training Partners. Are you peers in to the sport? If so, you are in luck. If not, you need to get out and meet some like-minded individuals. Triathlon is a lifestyle, as you will soon see, and if you surround yourself with people who excel at the sport, odds are you will, too. I would be willing to bet that there are more triathletes in your area than you thought. Do a search on tri-clubs with your city and see what you come up with.
8. Online Resources. There are several online resources which offer excellent tips, advice and other resources that will help make your first race a snap. Visit www.trinewbies.com and www.beginnertriathlete.com and check out the forums these sites offer. Many of the questions you have will be answered right there. Also, to find a race near you, visit www.trifind.com.
