Most of the races around here are a pool swim, gotta love it. Just don’t have many open water areas. 400 meter (sometimes yards) swim, 12 mile-30k bike, 5k run. Definitely helps the non-fishes.
I was under the impression the concept for the original ironman was to see who was the best…a swimmer, cyclist, or runner. Ironman will never change, but for the sole purpose of making a more equal competition between the 3 sports a race that would be like 2.4 mile swim, 50 mile Bike, 10 mile run…or something in the proportional range would knock a lot of the folks that are considered to having a chance at winning out of the top of the ranks.
International…
3k swim, 40k bike, 10K run
From wikipedia:
An equilateral triathlon is a triathlon in which each leg would take an approximately equal time. These triathlons were proposed by Wainer and De Veaux (1994) to redress the bias in favour of cycling over running and particularly over swimming in standard triathlons. Cycling occupies about 78% of the typical race distances, running 19%, and swimming 3%. Based on world-record times for similar distances, cycling would take 54% of race time, running 31%, and swimming 15%.
In Wainer and De Veaux’s equilaterial triathlons, cycling should take approximately 33% of race time, running 33%, and swimming 33% for a ratio of roughly 1:8:3.5 for distances of swimming / cycling / running. Examples would be:
Sprint 1 km
(0.6 mi) 8.5 km
(5.3 mi) 3.9 km
(2.4 mi)
Olympic 2.7 km
(1.7 mi) 22.4 km
(13.9 mi) 10 km
(6.2 mi)
Ironman 12 km
(7.5 mi) 96.2 km
(59.8 mi) 42.2 km
(26.2 mi)
Wainer and De Veaux’s proposal appears to have had little influence on triathlon race distances.
I personally would rather see some RD’s emphasizing one sport at the expense to the other two–so that would be an option that we’d have available. for example:
Swimmer’s dream: 2 mile/7 mile/5k
biker’s dream: 0.5 mile/50 mile/5 mile
runner’s dream: 0.5 mile/10 mile/10k
Not obvious at all. Triathlon is comprised of 3 popular sports. A marathon is a pretty common long distance run for runners. A century is likewise a coomon goal for cyclists (ok 112 is a bit longer but not extreme). 2.4 miles of swimming is very long for a swim event, 1500 m is about as long as most swimmers ever swim and then many avoid that event like the plague.
Certainly the times don’t even out, but most beginning triathletes are afraid of the swim, not the bike or run. Make an short triathlon 3.0km/20km/10km and you wont have many entrants.
Styrrell
I’m going to have to go ahead and disagree with 2.4mi being a “long” swim. A decent swimmer can knock 2.4mi out in under an hour. No one is doing a marathon in under an hour. The actual good swimmers here compete in 10k open water swims, which would seem to me to be an appropriate distance for an Ironman swim. A 2.4mi swim is something I wouldn’t even worry about; a marathon or 112mi bike ride is beyond my abilities for now (especially the bike. I hate the bike).
For the record, though, there are some events with “disproportionately-long” swims. Boulder has the Stroke & Stride series, where the primary event is a 1500m swim/ 5k run, which means that most people get them done in about the same length of time (I’m actually almost exactly on par, though I’m a better swimmer than runner). There is also a 750m version of it for those who want to stick to a sprint-tri ratio.
It would be interesting to have the swim last; people trying to get their wetsuits on in T2…lol. They would also need a lot more lifeguards in the water to pull people out. There would be a lot more DNF’s.
Funny you should mention that. At Tuesday night’s fun run someone asked what order the events in a triathlon were in and then asked why. A buddy of mine answered:
“Well, if you get tired running you can walk, if you get tired biking you can coast, and if you get tired swimming you can drown. So, you do the most dangerous event first when you are the freshest and most rested.”
Probably not the orignal reason for the order, but still a pretty good one.
Biathlon is a stupid sport because far less time is spent shooting than skiing. The skiing portion should be shortened to 100 meters.
I blogged about this a couple of years back:
http://triexpert.com/coach/real-triathlon-a-modest-proposal
…only later learning about the Wainer and De Veaux screed.
Mark McDonnell
Amen brother, but it will never happen. Registrations would drop like a lead weight.
I do have a good corporate sponsor in mind, though: Equitable Life Insurance. Get on it and make it happen! I might start actually doing some swim workouts then!
The last time this topic came up I figured a better way to set distance wasn’t equal times, but equal relevance.
Take the time between say the 10th place finisher and the 50% finisher for a race and scale the distances so those times are equal. Looking at the 2009 Kona results, the bike and run are just about right as the difference is just over an hour. Even though the bike takes about an hour and a half longer, the two legs make a similar impact on the results.
However, the swim difference is only about 20 minutes. So the swim is way under represented. This suggests the swim should be about 3 times longer. But making it that long might create a greater difference, so a good place to start would probably be the 10k swim.
This doesn’t even deserve a reply…but could you be any more wrong? You could try, but I don’t think you would be successful.
Everyone knows biathlon is all about the shooting. If you can ski well enough to keep up and hit all your targets, you win. If you are the best skier in the world, but can’t hit the targets, you lose.
WHO is the mystical person we are going to base this purely equal triathlon off?
my times would be something along the lines of this:
swim:2.4m (59:xx pr)
bike: 23m (guessing but i can do that for sure in an hour)
run: 15k (56:00 pr)
but then there would be ticked off swimmers that can’t cover those distances in an hour… or bikers that couldn’t… or runners…
you get the point, right? someone will always think it is weighted to one sport or another.
Along these lines I’d be interested to see a race distance that lands squarely between OLY and HIM, if possible… would be nice to have a race distance that mortals can complete in the 3-4 hour range.
Here in Ontario, Canada we have 2 races (that I know of) that covers 2,000m swim; 55 km bike and 15 km run. This is the perfect distance for me when comes down to time x pain x training ratio… I normally do in around 3h:30min-3h:45min
Have we considered relative pain/effort. It seems to me that a hard 10km run takes almost as much out of me as a hard 40km bike - regardless of the extra length of the bike leg.
So I am not sure equal time for each leg is quite right, but I do believe that the swim needs to be increased at each distance to put it on par with the relevance of the other two legs.
“Well, if you get tired running you can walk, if you get tired biking you can coast, and if you get tired swimming you can drown. So, you do the most dangerous event first when you are the freshest and most rested.”
No way am I taking off on a 1500m open water swim AFTER a 40k bike/10k run…gives “bonk” a whole new level of consequence.
I actually like the trend that the bike distance is increased and the run shortened, like in the new Abu Dhabi triathlon, for example:
Long distance: 3km Swim, 200km Bike, 20km Run
Short Distance = 1.5km Swim, 100km Bike, 10km Run
Sprint Distance = 750m Swim, 50km Bike, 5km Run
It seems easier to recover from and probably less injuries due to a long run.
I agree - shorten the run.
I’ve always thought of this as comparing apples to oranges. Upper body strength to leg strength. There is a reason we pedal bikes and run using our legs and not our arms. Why should each the three events take the same amount of time?
Having said that, an Ironman definitely seems to short change the swim. And Sprint race distances are all over the place. However, I think the Oly distance races are just about right. It takes less time for virtually anyone to complete the swim in an Oly than it takes for the bike or run. But the time differences seem to work out. I’m fairly average in each event. Not the fastest in any one event, but reasonably proficient overall. What I’ve found is that the “swimmers” are 5 minutes faster than me in the swim. The “cyclists” are 5 minutes faster than me on the bike. The “runners” are 5 minutes faster than me on the run. If someone is good at everything, they beat me by 15 minutes. If someone beats me by 5 minutes on the swim but then I pass them on the bike/run, they need to work on those events. If someone beats me by 5 minutes on the swim and they finish the race 5 minutes ahead of me, they’re a better swimmer than me!
It would be interesting to have the swim last; people trying to get their wetsuits on in T2…lol. They would also need a lot more lifeguards in the water to pull people out. There would be a lot more DNF’s.
DNFs??? more like MIAs
But you can be sure that your nearest and dearest will be paying a lot more attention to the race as it nears its conclusion!!
I agree…the Oly distance is one of the more “balanced” races and gives a more equally oportunity to do well regardless of what your strength is.
Great post / point.
IMO all three events need to matter with respect to the overall outcome, they don’t need to take the same amount of time.
I was under the impression the concept for the original ironman was to see who was the best…a swimmer, cyclist, or runner.
Yes but it was never thought of as “well the swim bike and run are all equal” so lets see who can be the more badass. It was a compitition of who does “their” event the best and the events were taken from actual Hawaiian events (so the distances/time were irrelevant to being “equal” to each other).