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. 
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!
