Right. Because everyone wears their $400 high performance fastkin jammers to do “uptempo” swims 
I said the same to my coach a few weeks ago after he had us doing a 1,500m TT (I added a few more excuses for good measure 
)
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Says you dont need carbs for a 10k or even a 1 hr 10k…
Takes a huge gel for a 34min tempo run.
Says you have enough glycogen on board for an hour…
Takes another huge gel for a 21minut “easy” swim.
Thing that make you go Hmmmm.
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To be fair, he said the only reason he was taking the gel for the run was that the swim was next.
You can find 1000 conflicting opinions in 1000 videos featuring Lionel, but not 2000 conflicting opinions 
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Didn’t he do a 1500 race with Sam Long last year and go under 20min?
Everyone’s gotta stop harping on his swim. It’s already been as good at it’ll get in the pool, and he’s just gotta keep putting in the work and hoping for a good day on race day. All the folks who keeping insisting he’s going to significantly improve have been wrong over, and over, and over again. I’m not saying LS isn’t putting in the work - I think he’s doing a great job of trying everything and doing everything he could possibly have done without sacrificing his game-winning bike-run to improve the swim, but this is as good as it’s gonna get.
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You are simply incorrect, and the numbers don’t lie. Was it like sub 19 a few years ago?, 20 min last year, 21 min this year. So it’s not as “good as it’ll get”, it was better a few years, yet never enough to swim at the front.
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Yes, numbers don’t lie. He isn’t getting any faster, and may have been faster last year. Stop harping on expecting meaningful swim improvement from him.
After listening to the Greg Harper TTH interview I watched Lionel’s swim and his comment on Lionel’s technique, he’s 100% right that Lionel’s left arm is much flatter than his right. Very evident on the video.
How have none of his on deck coaches caught that and fixed it?
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You seriously think Lionel went out to this swim meet expecting to match (or PR) previous times, and then coming out with the worst result he has gotten over this distance, and he wouldn’t be torturing himself on video? He’d be throwing everything out the window, talking about how he needs to focus on his swim, and that’s going back to Gerry at Tower 51, etc, etc ,etc ad nauseam.
He looked pretty relax and content with the result. So I’d say you are looking too much into it.
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Even if he ‘fixes’ it, it’s not going to give him any more than a fraction of a sec per 100. If even that - it might make him worse by throwing off the rest of his learned stroke. There are no big technique fixes left for Lionel to jump his speed.
I think there’s a chance they made this whole video just for the “6 hour recovery ride and 3 hours in the gym” joke at the very end. Which I thought was quite funny myself.
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Look at his run attire. He’s in full tights and a longsleeve, where as everyone else is in shorts and shirts/singlets. He’s not even gassed post “race” (and we know one of LS’ gifts is the ability to bury himself).
If that was an all out effort (it wasn’t) he’s in trouble for Oceanside (and would have been pretty dejected with his performances). He ran basically the same pace that he did at Oceanside last year…but for 1/2 the distance and without doing a swim/bike first (so he basically did a 10k tempo run at 70.3 race pace). He then proceeded to swim significantly slower than he did at Oceanside, despite the shorter distance.
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And he didn’t always swim that way (the flat left arm). At some point, he or someone consciously decided to change his technique.
Not necessarily consciously at all. Quite possible he’s got a structural imbalance somewhere that’s getting worse as he’s getting older - likely some what responsible for his deteriorating run form as events go on as well.
I say this as someone whose left arm swings flat now due to progressive shoulder impingement and run form that has deteriorated due to SI joint issues that have progressively gotten worse over the last 20 years.
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You mean he swam slower than he did with a wetsuit and drafting, in a pool all by himself with jammers, oh the horror…it was quite obvious he was doing a supported double training race day, 31+ 10k into a pretty decent 1500 swim. Looking at the paces he just swam steady and obviously not going for any PR’s, not sure why any of you would expect that or anything close right after running a 31 10k…
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I don’t see it. But let’s revisit this topic once race season starts then we will know for sure where he is, happy to be proven wrong. I think the gap to the front group is growing and with more and more ITU guys racing 70.3 that first 200-300 m is going to be like ~1:05/100 m which means the second group will likely form further up ahead and there is a risk he could miss those feet too.
I’d argue that his run form looks better than it did c. 2017. Its still very much imbalanced, but he noticeably has less of a gallop than he did back then at the end of races
I don’t disagree. The point was that altering form of an arm swing when swimming (or a dragging leg when running) aren’t necessarily the easiest of fixes. Seems a lot of people believe if you just do some drills and work with a coach these glitches go away and while that can be the case, it’s very often not
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With Lionel, the extreme leg dragging always comes about in the back half of a marathon. Run form for a 10K would look great. Just a cruisy double race day, Lionel will contend for the win on April 5th.
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New Vblog dropped:
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