I was told that you should just be able to see the bubbles churned up by the person swimming in front of you. At one tri I drafted and followed this rule. If I got too close all I could see was feet coming very close to my face and if too far away couldn't see the bubbles any more. It wasn't even that I intended to draft, but this guy was swimming at my exact pace so I just tucked in behind.

First of all, never 'save' anything in the pool hoping it will help you on the bike. Its gonna take a few minutes to get all the blood into your legs anyways so dont hold back. Your upper body will get plenty of rest on the bike. If you are talking pool swims, and the persons in front of you entered a 'real' swim time for the distance, you should all be around the same speed. now some do go out too fast and blow up the last 100 or even 200, but the more you do you will start seeing the same people seeded around you every race. Try spending more time and effort on your own strength and technique instead of hoping for a pull. Add speed work into your swimming and always have a long day either by time or by distance, keep track of those and compare them to see if you are improving. You can be a rocket on the bike and run but that doesnt mean you can swim. Work on technique, becoming more efficient in the water, elimitating drag on the recovery phase and gliding more instead of muscleing it.

If the person you are drafting is 'way faster' than you, you will not be able to stay with him, drafting or not. Pick someone about your pace, and maybe a little faster. Most likely, you will find this person in the very beginning of the race. And in the beginning, if your adrenaline levels are anything like mine, you won't be picking a guy going to slow.

Last year in the Gulf Coast Triathlon, I pulled in behind a guy who passed me duirng the first 100 meters of the swim. Almost immediately it seemed like he had slowed down considerably, because I was keeping in his draft with hardly any effort at all. So I slipped out and tried to pass him. To my surprise, he was still swimming faster than my normal pace, so I tucked back in behind him for about 1500 meters, until he started to fatigue about 500 meters from the beach. I blew on past him (and about a dozen others) to finish in a no-wetsuit time of 33 minutes (about 2 minutes faster than what I should have been able to do with a wetsuit). But the best part was that I felt refreshed and fantastic... Like I hadn't even done the swim.

My point is this: I drafted a guy with a faster pace than me, and I still was able to conserve a LOT of energy and still finish with a better time than I'm realistically capable of without drafting...

Put in enough yards/meters and you eventually get a feel for what pace is too fast, too slow, or just right for longer distances, and when you can pick up the pace without skyrocketing the heart rate.

My general drafting strategy isn't so much to use my tug boat for speed, but to pick someone at the beginning who looks to be both a competent swimmer and capable of making a big place in the water for themselves. Follow them at the start, and let them create a pathway through the pack that I can follow until people sort themselves out by the first buoy.

Then reassess, pass if needed and if possible jump on someone elses' feet. If there's no one else out there to draft off at that point, then no big deal, I'm not gonna wait for someone to show up.

... thank god you are talking about the swim or this might have turned into a really "interesting" post :)

My problem with drafting is that I am a terrible sprinter so I get mired in the pack early. What I try and do is draft a little then drop the group I am with and catch a group ahead, then draft them for awhile to recover, then go after the next group and so on. I find that I usually end up swimming faster overall than many who smoked me for the first 200-300m. I wish that I could just get in behind someone who is marginally faster than me and cruise the swim like some of my workouts in a pool with fast swimmers but the race situation makes this too hard to do.

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog