The last line of your comment and I appreciate your comment was one of the misconceptions I was going to address, but didn’t work with the overall article.
“A 1% improvement in the bike or run makes a bigger difference than in the swim.â€
That statement only rings true if you “silo†off all the legs of the race from one another. The swim is the only leg of the race that impacts the whole race. I have enough anecdotal eveidence to know that a slow, inefficient swim can significantly impact your bike.
I don’t disagree that there isn’t enough time. But based on the training plans I routinely see for the bike and run, the community isn’t looking for ways to be more efficient in the training.
Hope this helps,
Tim
^^^^^COMPLETELY Agree! Funny, but when I added more swimming the recovery it provided my legs through the gentle kneading motion made my bikes and run so much better! I have good buddy who is mid 50’s and after 22 Ironman and 7 Konas left the sport to run marathons. While he is one of the older runners in his group, his 6 days a week of hard swimming gives him SOLID aerobic capacity to race faster than those much younger and more pure speed. He swears by it. It’s no impact, aerobic base building that pays HUGE benefits!