I agree and disagree ... I have given this a lot of thought since my swim times absolutely suck and my run/bike times seem to be average! I agree that if you spend extra time in the pool that the time that it will save you overall is far less than if you were to spend the time getting stronger on the bike or run BUT here is the problem (at least for me) ... because of my slow swim times I am one of the last women in my age group out of the water - at this point because of how swim starts are set up I tend to then wind up biking with the slowest bikers ... obviously I can work my way up on the bike and run but its hard when you dont have people to chase. For me I need people to challenge me to push myself and because of my slow swim time I usually am not in position to bike/run with those people. I know this is the case because at my last race I had my typical slow swim but I got lucky and because of the swim start order I wound up biking with some of the faster men who started the swim after me ... I wound up with the fastest bike split for the women which helped me catch the top women and then I was able to run with faster people and I was only a few seconds off the fastest run split ... so this tells me that if I spend the time to get my swim times withing the range of the faster girls in my AG then I will improve on all fronts.

The only way to be less fatigued on the bike and run is to improve your bike and run fitness. The cross over fitness is limited from swimming to these other disciplines.

A better strategy would be to swim SLOWER, spend time working on improving transition time and one's biking and/or run training and one would be overall faster.

Maybe you haven't heard of the term OPPORTUNITY COST: The fact is spending 1.5 hours a week on LT threshhold run and/or bike training would give this person a greater return on their investment than the supposed 2minutes and 15 seconds benefit you assert from swimming.

Moreover, simply by working on improving transition times which is minimal effort in terms of work compared to improving swim times, would save most AGers the equivalent total time it would take them to shave off 10 seconds per 100m off their swim time.

So you give no credence to the idea that increasing cardio-vascular fitness, by whatever means, has benefit to your race?

If you will conceed that point, why is it so difficult to accept that swimming is a low risk of injury method of improving CV fitness when compared to an extra run?

I think it has some gains, but I think more significant time gains can be made on concentrating on

1. Working on transition times
2. Working on Running
3. working on biking

Looking at the recent Ironman Florida

The average swim time for all people who finished the race was 1h 16minutes which is a 2minutes per 100m pace. To improve 16 minutes on the swim to get to 1 hour which in swimming terms is a tremendous improvement (about 25% improvement in swim time) would take a lot of time in the pool. By the way 1hour in the swim is top 7% of swim times.

Now the average run time was 5h and 1minute and bike time was 6h and 5minutes. Average T1+T2 time was 14 minutes. To improve 15 minutes combined in these disciplines would require significantly less training time than the equivalent time to save the 15 minutes in the swim. More likely if one had the extra time to devote to improving their swim time by 15-16 minutes one would be better off using that time to bike and run

Improving transition times to 8 minutes total which isn't even in the top 10% of transition times saves you 6 minutes already from the average. It requires minimal practice to improve transitioning.

Now we have 9 minutes to save on the bike and run. 9 minutes over an average of 11 hours biking and running is minimal. It represent something like 1.5% time improvement for the average person. Even if transitions remained the same, 15minutes over 11 hours represents 2.2%.

Spending the time improving one's bike and/or run fitness is just a better approach.

Hell I bet the average person could save 5 minutes by becoming more aero on the bike without any other change in training ir equipment

Look, I am a better swimmer than most in triathlons. Sure I could get faster, but there is just more to gain by biking and running. I would prefer a race that had a greater percent devoted to the swim. The fact is that for IM and HIM and for the average AGer in Olympic racing, there just is more time to be had on the bike and run. It is a fact of the sport.

If you are mop out of the water, you are not going to improve your T1 time by "practicing" anything. That is a function of crowding (no knock on the vols, it is just congested.) But, getting into T1 ahead of the pack will dramatically improve your transition time.

I think your analysis of the time splits is misleading. You improve times with improvements in technique (economy) and fitness.

I suggest that the discretionary time is better spent in the pool because your heart does not know it is swimming, riding or running and the risk of injury is lower.

In your particular situation, you may have greater economy issues with riding or running. In that case, extra time on those sports might have greater benefit. But, granting equal fitness, the 2:00/100 swimmer will get greater gains working on swim technique.

""""""""""The only way to be less fatigued on the bike and run is to improve your bike and run fitness. The cross over fitness is limited from swimming to these other disciplines.""""""""

Not true. Look big picture. If you decrease the amount of fatigue that the swim causes then you should be able to bike and run better, after all your overall fatigue is less exiting the water. Triathlon is about cumulative fatigue. Increasing your swim fatigue resistance lowers the amount of fatigue that you experience upon exiting the water. granted improving your bike and run fitness should yield lower times, but if you overcook yourself swimming you race suffers, same with biking. Ride too hard you running suffers. So your hypothesis should be the only way to improve run and bike fitness in a triathlon is to run and bike more and race with proper pacing. To test this go to the next tri, try to swim sub 19:00 for 1.5k since you about a 22:00 swimmer. I'm willing to bet that if you swim above your fitness level for the whole 1.5k your race will be less than stellar.

"""""""""A better strategy would be to swim SLOWER, spend time working on improving transition time and one's biking and/or run training and one would be overall faster.""""""""

A better strategy would be to swim faster, keep the rest the same and your faster (at least by my reckoning) Or you could swim faster, improve your transition time and your still faster. Or you could improve any of the three and your faster. You could even improve all three and still be faster.

You go ahead and swim slower, after all the one with the lowest overall time across the line wins. If you want to put yourself further back from me then you would, please do. Also you will run into a limit on the bike and run where just adding volume will not keep improving your bike and run splits. But with swimming as long as you refine your technique you can still make gains, maraginal to large.


""""""Maybe you haven't heard of the term OPPORTUNITY COST: The fact is spending 1.5 hours a week on LT threshhold run and/or bike training would give this person a greater return on their investment than the supposed 2minutes and 15 seconds benefit you assert from swimming."""""""""

Trust me, I deal with that all the time coaching athletes. You really need to re-read that post. I said :15 from swimming and the rest from improved fatigue resistance related to the gains the extra time spent swimming gains. Think of it as a gas tank. You have so much fuel to burn. Go to fast in the swim and your burn rate is higher than sustainable, forcing you to slow down to bring your burn rate in line with what your body can tolerate and maintain (physiology simplified so I don't have to type too much.) To do that you have to go slower than you could have sooner or later. In reality, improving your stroke technique is the fastest way to get faster in the water. If your swimming as much as you claim to be and only swimming 60 min you most likely need stroke flaws corrected. I took 8 years out of the water, got back in this winter and avg 4k per week going into IMAZ. I cruised through in 58:30 without breathing hard. Why? Better technique than the overwhelming majority, ingrained from focusing on my swimming when I was younger.


"""""""Moreover, simply by working on improving transition times which is minimal effort in terms of work compared to improving swim times, would save most AGers the equivalent total time it would take them to shave off 10 seconds per 100m off their swim time."""""""

Well you must have really, really slow transitions if saving :10 per 100m is equivalent to improving your transitions. Even over a sprint distance triathlon :10 per 100m is 80secs (oly 2:40, half 3:20, full IM 6:40 for time reduction that :10 per 100m saves). I think you should rethink that statement.

I'm not saying that you should not work on your bike and run. You should. But for the majority of triathletes time spent in the pool will benefit their overall race more than just the actual time shaved off the swim times. You have to look at triathlon systemically, how the pieces fit together, how a gain here can benefit and produce again there, not just the net savings yielded by doing something more. I'd also say that just doing something more without proper planning will not yield you what a properly planned focus would but that is a related discussion

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Your heart might not know it, but the mitochondria in your legs do. It is the increased oxidative capacity as well as in the increase in mitochondria in your skeletal muscles that improve your performance, which results from time doing LT intensity runs and bike work outs.

And yes there are time gains even for MOP to be made in transitions. There are tons of guys who sit, take time putting on socks, changing into bike shorts and top then switching to run clothes. taking time to stop and drink or eat, put on sun tan lotion, etc. There is an economy in practicing transitioning.

I am not saying one can't get faster on the swim or shouldn't, I'm just saying with limited time most people have there are bigger gains to be made elsewhere.

You can be a MOP swimmer and still be top 100 in the Hawaii IM. However, no top 100 finisher is a MOP cyclist or runner. Look it up.

It is the fact of the sport.

As for swimming slower. I just mentioned that because if one is "too fatigued" after the swim to cycle. Then swim slower and cycle faster, you will be faster than pushing one's swim and being fatigued for the rest of the race. It is called pacing. Clearly a person who is fatigued after the swim, paced themselves poorly. They should swim SLOWER and cycle faster and run faster, their overall time will still be faster.

As for transition times, look at the average transition time for Florida IM. It is 14 minutes. cutting that by 6 minutes = 0:10seconds per 100m for the swim.

The average transition time for the past Florida HIM was 11 minutes. So cutting this down by 3 minutes to 8 minutes is also equal to 0:10 seconds per 100m for the swim.

So perhaps you want to check your data.

I am talking about the average AGer.

Average AGer run time = 5 h, bike time = 6h, swim time = 1h 15m. There just is more time in the other disciplines to improve. 4:45 marathon isn't even top 10% (a savings of 15 minutes), while the same time savings in the swim is top 10% and requires more effort. Just better to swim slow, conserve energy and bike and run fast it is more efficient for the average AGer to spend the time improving the bike and run.

Wow, man. You just don't seem to understand what DesertD is saying.

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I don't think you do.

The notion of fatigue resistance is just a euphemism for FITNESS. If you are fitter on the bike and run you will go faster.

The question is with limited time how best to become fitter and faster in HIM and IM distance events.

That is what is the Marginal Benefit from training in swimming versus running versus cycling?

Yes, you can improve by spending time swimming, whether it is working on technique, or intensity or volume; however, the Marginal Benefit from this is substantially lower than the Marginal Benefit of Run and/or Cycling training.

If one is fatigued after the swim, yes you can swim more and become less fatigued through training. More likely you just paced yourself incorrectly.

BTW, of course I will be slower overall if I went too hard in the swim, by going 19:00 instead of 22:00. Then I wouldn't have gotten the pacing right. It is a specious argument. It is like saying, if I hammer the first 20 miles on the bike, and are fatigued for the rest of race I should work on improving hammering the bike. No, you should work on pacing yourself better on the bike, or improving your overall bike fitness. Sometimes going slower at some point in the race will yield an overall faster result.

Swimming within one's ability albeit slowly will lead to less fatigue and a faster performance.


If one is fatigued after the swim slow down on the swim, and go slower. A 20 second per 100m slower swim time for an IM distance is a substantial reduction in effort, yet equates with only a 12.5 minute slower time.

If as you and DD assume, feeling less fatigued on the swim lets you go faster on the bike and run, I am sure based on your own assumptions you could easily make this 12.5 minutes and more on a 112 mile bike and 26.2 mile swim and transition times.

Bottom line, I am talking about Marginal Benefit analysis, i.e., with the limited time people have how best and most efficiently can one improve their overall time. It isn't by spending extra time on the swim.

For almost all triathletes, there is a finite amount of time one can devote to training. Whatever amount of time one can devote, that person would be far better off concentrating on biking and running. In an ideal world, people would become awesome swimmers too, but with limited time to train people would be better off concentrating on biking and runninf.

If people are spending a third of their training in the pool, then unless they are elite athletes, they are not being efficient. the rascal is dead on!

Read what DD is saying. Those of you who think you can get by on the swim with only 1 swim per week are kidding yourselves. Michielle (sp?) Jones used to train with my club swim team when I was in HS. She used to talk about how aerobic fitness translates across the board. Not sure about you, but the body can handle a lot more time at a high HR while swimming compared to running and biking, and there is virtually no impact. Why do you think swimmers can come to the sport and immediately do so well? It might have to do with the fact that their sport allows them to spend so much time at a HR between 145-160 in any given week.

Swimming is overrated...right...Its easy to say that if you are not very good at it. You can only wish you had the aerobic engine which most elite swimmers have when they make the cross-over. If swimming is such a waste of time, because you are not able to work the mitochondria in your legs, then try this: bust your ass on a real kick set. Improve your kicking to the point where you can easily kick 20 100 yards on 1:40 with 10 seconds rest. You would say, "well I don't kick much in the race." Thats true, but your legs don't know you are kicking. If you can swim fast and if you can kick fast, then you WILL be strong on both the swim and the bike. One summer some guys from my college swim team decided to take up cycling. Strangely the paceline seemed to mirror the order which we went in the pool for kick sets. LT work in the pool, both swimming and kicking, will translate directly to the bike. I can't help but smile at the fact of how ignorant you are...its not too often that I get fired up on this forum, but your ignorance is amazing.

Go Flanagan, go!!!

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Your out of the water 2-4 mins down from the leaders, and they have created a nice draft-legal distance pack. They are pulling away from you while you push your own wind. Who's going faster now?

It's funny that a lot of non swimmers don't get it when it comes to swim training. Two of the better swimmers to ever do the sport that I swam with, Mark Allen and Wolfgang Deittrich, both told me independently that they swim 5 days a week not so much for the extra speed, but that it helped the body, and most importantly, the legs to recover from the days bike and/or run workouts. It would allow them to get on it just a little bit harder the next day. I feel the same way, nothing like a good swim to get the lactate out of the legs quickly. I understand that those guys, like me, have all day to train, but the physiology still applys to the athlete with a fixed amount of time. And you are right,the aerobic engine that is built in the pool, transfers to the other two sports. I also believe that it is an injury prevention exercise. So it is not a waste of time to put in those extra swim workouts, and in the big scheme of things, will be a big benifit to your race, and your longetivity in the sport...Great points Flanagan, and congrats on your SOMA race, another ex swimmer rocketing to the front of the pack in tri, must be something in the water..( Us, 2 to 4 hours a day, for 15 to 25 years)

Perhaps you didn't read my posts.

First, while I am not an elite level now, I do swim in the Top 10% overall for Triathlons. So I do think I am a good at it. Moreover, I do come from an elite swimming background having played at the elite level of water polo in college.

Second, yes swimming is lower impact than running and biking. Yes there maybe fitness gains to be made by swimming. I am just saying and it is just a matter of the distances in the sport, one is better off using one's time training on the bike and/or run.

Your argument using Professional triathletes is a specious one. Professional triathletes devote more time to their training. For them every second counts. They are already at or close to their max ability in all 3 sports, especially when you pick the best guys ever to participate in the sport.

Also, let's take your example of elite swimmers starting triathlon. If they had one extra hour to train would you tell them to swim, bike or run. Clearly you wouldn't tell them to swim. You'd tell them to bike and/or run. That is called MARGINAL BENEFIT analysis. The same holds true for the AGer.

For the AVERAGE AGE GROUPER, whose time is much more limited than a pros, the issue is how best to spend the limited time they have to get better.

5 hours in the pool a week, or 1-2 hours in the pool and 3-4 hours extra on the bike or run. I guarantee for the typical AGer the fact is more time can be gained in a race by running and/or biking.

It is just a matter of distances in the sport. There is just more time spent on the course running and biking than swimming. That's the way the sport is. You don't like it then compete in aquathlons or open water swim races.

As I have mentioned before to go from average in the Swim in an IM 1:16 to top 10% which is 1 h would require a tremendous increase in swimming. For most AGers there is no extra time, so that this extra swim time must come at the cost of some other training time. Even if one had an extra 1 or 2 hours to train, it is still better for the average AGer to increase run and bike volume and intensity.

Average run time is 5h, if people spent the extra time getting their marathon to 4h 40m (which isn't really a fast marathon time) which in my opinion would require less time training than dropping the equivalent time in the swim, they are better off by 4 minutes.

Moreover, i think that if they actually did spend the time running rather than the using that same extra time neeeded to drop their swim time from average 1:16 to 1 hour, they would better their run by more than 20 minutes.

The same think hold true on the bike.

You guys are misrepresenting my argument. Sure working on swimming will help, but the extra time spent is BETTER spent on working on biking or running.

I am not saying keep running and cycling the same and quit swimming. I am saying if one had 1 extra hour to train what is the most effective way to get better, i.e., what kind of training has the greatest MARGINAL BENEFIT. It is certainly not swimming.

Perhaps you didn't read their posts? You keep missing some key points. And we all get the MB>MC part.

I understand what you are saying; I understood it a few posts back. And you are wrong -- because the truth is that it depends on way too many factors (contraints/limiters) to determine MB vs. MC.

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