Based on what I have heard Greg say on TTH, I don’t think they still “work” on a plan together. I think Greg gave him stuff to do after they spent a week together but that hasn’t been something I would call consistant coaching.
Regarding coaching in general, the fact that the best in the support jave come up through a coaching system and use great coaches, the fact that Sam refuses to is interesting hubris.
I’m not a SL expert, but I don’t think he’s necessarily refused coaching. He’s swam at aquabears, and has videos where he’s been with the squad, getting on-deck coaching feedback, etc. If it WORKED meaning getting him meaningful improvements compared to doing it on his own, he almost certainly would still be doing it, as would Lionel.
I’ll highly bet that he and Lionel tried ample coaching for awhile and didn’t see the gains they needed to get to the front. In that case, might as well optimize for your overall training schedule.
We’ll see how Ari does as well - as he said in a latest podcast, he’s been swimming with a squad like 5 days a week and then swimming afterwards as well for like up to 30+k/wk. He says he’s improving his swim, which is hopeful, but even he has yet to demonstrate getting to FOP.
To be fair, has ANYBODY who has been a historically sub-avg pro triathlon swimmer (with regards to the typical field they race) over several years, been magically coached into a FOP pro tri swimmer? Anybody? I can’t even think of one pro swimmer who was stuck in the BOMOP for years, than joined a swim squad and then made enough progress to get to the FOP.
I honestly can’t even think of a single AGer who is serious about tri and has put in respectable work on the swim for at least several years and thus plateaud for years, then join a squad and go from MOP to FOP consistently. All the videos you see on youtube of these incredible swim improvements of like 20sec/100 or more, from solid swim channels , are invariably of non-plateaud newer swimmers who haven’t even began to touch their swim potential in their first measuurements.
I think this is more of a function that these ‘great’ young swimmers were often great swimmers in youth, to the point they were readily idenfied as potential swim stars, and then trained with highly competitive squads appropriate to their level.
You don’t get ‘average ability’ swim folks ending up in elite youth training swim squads. It’s absolutely a highly self-selecting process where only the ones with the potential to swim that fast make the team.
There are a few rare pro triathletes that really only learned to swim seriously as an adult but they seem really rare amongst today’s super competitive field. (I had thought Ben Kanute was rumored to be an adult-onset swimmer, but turns out he was acompetitive kid swimmer by age 7 as well.)
ok, hold back 2 minutes on the bike but finish out of the top 10 with a run PR? this is racing for money, not PR’s like an AG does
I can think of a few guys that jumped 2nd to first pack back in the day. Mike Pigg probably the biggest jump, he hard worked his way to the front. Greg Welch and Ken Glah were also guys that would be a minute behind, worked their way to the lead Kona groups and greg even one year swam off the front.
In more recent times Bjorn was a guy that swam very little, but found a way to be in just about every lead group. Think he maybe had a year as a kid to swim, shows how much that early muscle training can carry through and be hardwired for life..
Yeah, respect to all those guys who improved their swim a lot.
To be fair as well though, it was a different era in the <2000s in a pro tri swim field. They’re weren’t slowsters by any stretch, but it wasn’t in general as competitive in the swim compared today.
I don’t know the numbers, but I’m curious how both SL and LS would fare in the Kona swims in the <2000 era.
If what you’re saying about Bjorne is actually true, I’d totally disagree with you that his 1-year of kid training hardwired him for life. Nah, it’s like 1000x more likely that he had intrinsic strong swim genetic ability that he just didn’t have the chance to express until he had to. Swimming for a year and hardwiring you for life would mean that tens, if not hundreds of thousands of young kid swimmers have the potential to be pro/D1 type swimmers just because they swam for a few years in youth swimming, and that’s absolutely not true.
The swim talent has not changed much if anything at all. Times are a little faster because guys get to wear the cheater suits, and the course was shortened in 2016 by 200 meters. We used to swim 50/51’s in the lead group back in the day, the off the front guys were doing 48’s. Record swims were in the 46’s.
So to see what SL and LS would do back then, just add about 2 1/2 to 3 minutes to their times they do now, that would be pretty close..Dont be fooled by the super fast guys swimming out there today, we had the super fast guys of the day also there, and they were closer to the top swimmers than todays guys were, some olympic finalists even..
That’s good info, thanks
Someone needs to do another of this type of analysis:
Covering Kona finishes 1986-2018, they do say:
The swim plays an important tactical role but can be neglected for the overall finishing times. Let’s have a look at the bike and run splits to see where these faster times come from.
I’m not interpreting this as swim slow = fine at Kona, I’m seeing this more as all the contenders swimming just fast enough to have a real chance at winning, but not so crazy that they risk blowing up their bike-run.
I’d be curious if a re-analysis of the last 5 years of racing not just at Kona, but in general, reflects the same trend, where swim times are largely the same, where bike-run gets faster and faster. Again, I suspect the swim ability IS actually getting better in today’s era, but athletes might be choosing to not drill it if they don’t have to, and then unleash a more lethal B-R (like Blu on the bike at Oceanside, he said he wasn’t drilling it so he could run fast. I’ll bet he could have put a real beatdown on the field had he taken the risk to drill the bike.)
I’m no talking about just swimming, I mean a coach for his entire program.
Yeah, but it’s not like he hasn’t tried with coaching in the past.
Sure, it would make it harder to critique him if he was swimming year-round with a good established squad and getting the same results, but I think it’s pretty unfair to say that SL isn’t sufficiently invested in his swim improvement that he’s foregoing this obvious route to improvement completely. He’s tried several coaches intermittently in the past, and definitely was swimming with the Aquabears squad for a bit - I’ll bet it didn’t stick just because it wasn’t taking him to the FOP swim as he’d hoped given the time/schedule challenges, which are real for a big big-runner like himself.
I guarantee that if it were as easy as joining a fast swim squad and swimming with them for a year or two to make FOP, he would pack up his whole family and do it. It’s just that nobody can make that guarantee, AND he’s got a lot of evidence from doing similarly in smaller chunks in the past that it likely wont’ work.
I’m going to qualify those efforts as half assed. He’s never really fully committed to the process. Again, everyone keeps harping on the swimming whereas I think he needs bike and run help even more so.
Ok, but I’d qualify that SL’s ‘half-assed’ efforts are almost certainly 100%-best efforts, just not at the multi-year squad with coach on deck frequency you folks seem to require of him. But when he’s there, he’s going to be all-in, focused and hard.
And when you’re doing that, even a part-time effort SHOULD yield measurable improvements. If you’re saying a full-time coaching/squad program can get him 4 mins on the swim, he absolutely should be seeing 1 min type gains in races/pools/timetrials consistently with the lesser coached approach.
I can guarantee he’s not even seeing these types of gains with the coaching encounters he’s had yet. Maybe he’s turned a corner in these past 2 races and has found the right combo, but it certainly hasn’t changed before then.
It’s fallacious to say that if an athlete isn’t 100% all-in, that they’ll get 0% of the gains. If they’re properly executing at least a meaningful portion of that all-in, they should get some portion of measurable gains, or else it’s not working.
I’ve done this. When I did my first 70.3 12 years ago, I went 41 mins in M30 which was smack middle of the age group. Now I’m swimming 30 mins and looking to go 29:xx in my first year in M45 this year (which should be top 5 or 10 in the AG).
As it happens, I have a handy spreadsheet with all my race stats for easy filtering
Except for Lake Placid in 2018 (due to the guide wire I’m thinking), there’s a clear marker of before pandemic (38ish mins) and after pandemic (32-34 mins), and then another jump last year. Don’t trust The Canadian since the swim was very short and I don’t think it should count for the trendline. All races are wetsuit legal.
What changed? I started swimming with a new club in 2021, with a fantastic coach on deck and with sessions that were 1h30. I took her feedback and started doing swims on my own that are basically just drill sets. Even now, 1 swim a week for me is basically just drills to fix what’s wrong and working on while 2 are with the club.
For those in Ottawa, I highly recommend NMSC with Leslie.
Looks like Sam had to go out and get a part time job Door Dashing.
That’s some great improvement and encouraging stuff!
How much swimming had you done by 2014 prior to your first 70.3?
Awesome progression!
None beyond splashing in the pool as a kid. First triathlon was an Olympic distance in 2013 and that was my first time in a pool for the purpose of swimming laps.
That’s great @timbasile! It motivated me to go back and look at my lack of progression! In 2006 at my first half I swam 30:42. Two weeks ago at Oceanside I swam 30:30. LOL! In Kona 2007 I swam 1:04. In Kona 2024 I swam… 1:04.
I’m not arguing when he’s working with someone, he’s not all in. This isn’t about a “deck coach”. This is about a REAL full-on coach. He’s only dabbled briefly with that, and I feel it’s to his detriment.
Thanks! Though I suppose you had the advantage of starting fast. Even maintaining means that you’re faster in the age group!
