I’m the one who posted the dumb newbie question below, so keep in mind I really don’t know what I’m talking about. That’s never stopped me before, so…
The following comment is from another thread …“And “least important” thats an ignorant perception about triathlon. Nothing is unimportant—its all very important (again if you want to be competitive) Why does McCormack swim like 10 miles a week if its the least important event?”
I admit to an ignorant perception, but in a short triathlon if I spend 16-18 minutes in the water, an hour or more on the bike, and nearly an hour running doesn’t it make sense that a percentage gain in the latter two would help my overall performance more? It’s a different discussion, but I’m a beginning cyclist so that would also constitute training for my weakness.
I realize most of the threads here are geared to a much higher level but I appreciate the input.
I don’t know about him, but there is some logic to the philosophy: “Train your weakness, race your strength”. It seems like you can make the biggest overall perfromance gains using that method of prioritization with training time. Personally, I tend to make the mistake of gravitating toward the activity I am least bad at (cycling, then running- swimming is an embarrassment for me). I could work for two months and get maybe 1 minute faster over 40km. but two hard months in the pool would probably save me 3 minutes over 1.5km.
okay, so heres what i meant by my comment----if youre an awesome runner and a horrible swimmer. Wheres your time best spent? On the swim. If you’re a great runner and you spend 20 hrs training on the run how much better will you get? a minute? But if you spent that time on a really bad weakness like the swim you might see 3-4 min improvements.
Your biking should take most of your training time, cause it does account for the biggest time in a tri. But your weakness should be right there. Like, last week i spent the most amount of minutes on the bike, but my swimming was a very close 2nd like 50 mins less than the bike time.
Also if as you say, "if I spend 16-18 minutes in the water, an hour or more on the bike, and nearly an hour running " that doesnt sound like most sprint tris. Where the swim is that short and the bike and run is that long. I’m assuming youre doing a sprint tri of like 1000yd, 15-18 miles bike and 5k running. So times would be like 23 min swim, 54 min bike, 30 min run for a newbie.
What are your strengths and weaknesses? What have your race results shown? One thing i like to look at is comparing my time to others in my age group. So if there are 20 people in my age group and i had the 15th fastest swim, 4th fastest bike and 8 fastest run. I can see that my strengths are in this order: bike, run, swim. So in that case, time spent swimming is time well spent. And time spent biking may be considered time well wasted. Cause with a swim that far behind the leaders, i’d have to be an unbelievable biker to make up for that poor of a swim.
One of the best quotes i’ve heard about swimming importance is, “you cant win the race on the swim, but you can lose it.”
Hope this makes sense, keep the questions coming BillT, and welcome to the world of triathlon. I had no idea when i did my first tri that I’d be this addicted to it. good luck!
My situation is sort of the opposite. The triathlon to which I was referring was a 1000 yd swim, a bike of about 20mi. and a 10k run. I swam in college and was MOP swimming but way back on the other two. About 18 mph on a fairly flat bike ride and over 9 min/mile (half dead) run. I don’t know if I can take 3-4 minutes off of that swim but I should definitely be able to improve 3-4 minutes each on the other two with some training.
I prefer to spend most of my time on the bike. Both the run and bike depend upon legs. All three disciplines depend upon the Cardiovascular system. You can get LONG workouts for your CV system on the bike without killing your legs, something that you can’t do running without risking injury. Sure, you have to swim in order to be good at it, and you can lose the race on the swim. But, more training volume can be done, and be done without the risk of injury (besides being hit by a car!) by training most of the time on the bike.
I disagree with you, Francois, on at least one point.
“3. long easy miles are very easy on the bike and can be used to establish deep aerobic base for running at least.”
Of the exercise physiology books I have read, which I grant you aren’t many, they indicate that there is none to very little crossover between sports. One text highlighted this point with a couple of research studies and indicated they felt triathletes were pretty impressive because they could achieve such good levels of fitness in 3 separate disciplines despite the fact that there was no evidence of cross training effect (“Essentials of Exercise Physiology” by Mcardle, Katch and Katch ,1994).
Thus, to create a deep aerobic base for running, I would think you have to run.
I do agree that the importance of the swim, and thus the emphasis placed on swim training, is event dependent. Triathletes racing draft legal events MUST become great swimmers. However, for age groupers who race non-drafting races, swimming still has a lower importance in my mind (except if it is your weakness where the philosophy of train your weakness and race your strength still applies). My main theory why, is that becoming a fast swimmer is much more technique dependent than running and cycling (cycling is likely in the middle with regards to being technique dependent). Technique driven activities are best learned when you are young (eg. violin, gymnastics, swimming), when your brain is more maleable and able to obligate a larger percentage of your brain to the task being learned. Neurological developmental studies have shown this phenomenon to take place when children learn and have also shown that adult brains show MUCH less adaptability.
Thus, triathletes that took up competitive swimming as adults likely have less room for improvement in swimming than they do in running and cycling, where increase VO2Max and anaerobic threshold will give a bigger bang for the buck.
My comments were aimed at olympic or sprint distance non drafting triathlons. Not IM. But i pretty much guarantee you in an IM, that if you come out of the water 30 minutes back of the leaders in your AG, your not going to place in your AG. Right?
My comment about Macca was taken out of an Inside Triathlon interview done with Macca after IM Australia. And his comment was such that, “people always say that the swim isnt important, but had i not had a 3 min lead off of the swim on (i dont remember whom) i wouldnt have won the race.” I read it once, someone can go look in a april-june issue of IT for the Macca article and his exact comment. And the reason that the Aussie tri camp swim 8k a day at least is because their training for draft legal races, right? Where you might as well go home if you come out 1 min behind the pack that came out of the water 1 min behind Craig Walton.
And BillT, because you relatively are a swimmer first biker second and runner third. Be very careful increasing mileage on the run. If you get injured like some overuse injury, thats not hard to do when you begin to bump up run training. I’d say at this time, focus on the bike cause Francois is right about getting a good aerobic base from biking with relatively little likelihood of injury, minus bike crashes (which will happen). And flirt with the run, and build the run up. And practice those brick sessions weekly cause as im sure you’ve already realized running off of the bike is nothing like running a 10k race alone.
Interesting points Francois. I understand your point that central adaptation would occur with any cardiovascular training. I don’t understand how that doesn’t translate into an improvement in VO2max. Isn’t VO2max determined by both central (heart) and peripheral (muscular) factors? The lack of improvement in AT and muscular endurance makes sense since this requires adaptations in the periphery (muscles) to specific actions. Any thoughts on the lack of VO2max crossover?
Excellent job on the swim improvements you’ve achieved. However, I hypothesize that you are not the norm. I swim with a pretty good masters swim team. They have won provincial and nationals (Canada) before and yet they only have 2 swimmers that I am aware of who can go sub 18’ for 1500m short course (one being a pro triathlete). A significant proportion of our time is spent on drills, especially early on in the season.
I agree that significant improvements in swim times can be made initially over the first few years of swimming. I started with a 28’ 1500m and am now below 21’30’‘. However, I find the improvements are coming more slowly and I will likely never get below 19’ (at least not without increasing my pool time +++ to the detriment of running and biking time). Sub 20’ maybe. But I am limited by technique. Despite being reasonably dedicated to drills my distance per stroke remains horrible with 19-20 strokes per length being my norm. My running on the other hand has gone from a 45’ 10k to 38’ and I feel quite capable of improving to sub 35’. Similarly with my cycling I starting with a 1’25’’ 40k in an olympic tri and currently can go 1’05’’ and feel 1’ is a reasonable goal. Time and training will tell. Given the improvements which I think I can achieve in biking and running, I will continue to spend more time training these.
I think that regardless of which event is your best, you still need to try and balance your total training across all three disciplines. When training for an ironman, you are committing so much time that 10 miles of swimming is not really extreme (for elite athletes anyway) and the swim is another way of building your overall fitness level without stressing out the legs. You can build on your fitness doing any of the three but it is much easier mentally and physically to spread it around.