How do I do this? I have always assmed the answer is find some fast moving ankles and stick to them. Can you give me any pointers please?
Nothing tricky, like on the bike get as close as possible to their feet. But find some just a bit faster than you - not a lot faster. It still takes energy, even when drafting.
Have you checked out the articles on open-water swimming at slowtwitch yet?
they’re under:
http://www.slowtwitch.com/mainheadings/swimcenter/swim.html
in particular, check out
http://www.slowtwitch.com/mainheadings/swimcenter/tactics.html
and
http://www.slowtwitch.com/mainheadings/swimcenter/openart.html
yes, you can draft off of someone’s feet which is better than no draft at all. But if you aren’t paying attention, you can really annoy the person you are trying to draft off of by inadvertintly hitting their feet with your hands. once or twice isn’t bad, but if you are lucky to be on that person’s feet for a long while they will get annoyed after the 20th whack. then they’ll either slow down and give you a nice kick to the head or sprint for a few seconds and drop you. then you got nothing. not to mention the water behind a person’s feet is turbulent which makes swimming challenging.
So the key is to draft off of someone without them knowing it. or doing it in a way that doesn’t bother that person and they let you sit there. Learning to draft off of someone else’s hips is the way to go. I like to breathe to my right in open water swims, so i find someone who also breathe’s to the right and i move up on their left side (hard to look left when you are breathing to the right) so my head is inline with their hips…sometimes just a little in front or a little behing the hips. you’ll feel it when you catch their water. it just carries you a bit…enough that you have to slowdown your efforts or you’ll move up too far and lose the draft. once I find that sweet spot, i then adjust my stroke so that my left arm and the other guy’s left arm are in sync. that way my right arm never hits his left arm.
also with the hip drafting you can see what’s in front of you, which is nice if the guy you are drafting off of starts to go off track. then you can find someone else to draft off of
I did this at IMLP last year and swam a 52:00. Came out of the water as if it was a warm-up. Once you learn this you’ll never draft off someone’s feet again.
I’ll ditto this excellent explanation. Just one other point though. Find a guy bigger and faster than you! :0, It is so much easier than drafting all those fast women swimmers who just seem to glide through the water without making a sound or distrubing the water. How do they do that? :),
-Robert
This is the best explanation of drafting I have ever seen. I have never been able to stay on anyone’s feet. I either stay too close and keep hitting their foot, or I drop off and lose them. It doesn’t help that all my races are usually in water that doesn’t allow you to see your own outstretched hand.
Thanks,
If you learn the secret let me know. I have probably done something in the neighborhood of 100 races and have had a long term draft exactly once. I have not had much luck at finding a person at the right speed. The one time I did it was a hugh help. Not so sure I came out of the water any faster, but I sure was rested. I do make use of short term drafting, but it ususally fades due to incompatibility of speed.
I really don’t have a ton of credibility on this, but last weekend was the first time I made a conscious effort to draft in a long race, and it seemed to work pretty well. I am not a fast swimmer, but managed to finish pretty much in the middle of my age group.
I started off behind some feet that were not particularly fast, but fast enough that I could catch my breath and avoid much of the “floating bar fight”.
After a little bit, I started to look for some different feet - some that were a little faster. I popped up, saw someone swimming ahead of my guy, so I just cut over to the new feet and settled in. As the swim progressed, I kept doing this and finished a little ahead of my expected time despite the choppy water, and in pretty good shape physically.
If I were to sum up what I learned in bullet points, they would be:
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A good pair of feet are worth fighting for. Do not be afraid to be physical. Nobody ever said Triathlon is not a contact sport…
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Always be looking for faster feet. You never know when the guy in front of you decides he has had enough and drops in to a breast stroke (this happened to me just past the half way point)
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Pay attention to the colors on the swim caps in front of you and behind you. NEVER draft of someone who was in the wave in front of you - they are SLOW (duh). If you see someone passing you from the wave that started behind you, jump on those feet and fight for them - they are worth more than gold.
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If someone hits your feet too much, make an unexpected move and deny them your feet. You don’t have to put up with it. If you hit someone’s feet too much, you deserve to get dropped like a bad habit.
Love to hear other pointers from people with more experence than I have.
John
I think there are a few keys to getting a good draft. The first is to start off fast enough so that you are swimming with people that are just a bit faster than you. The best draft for me is a stronger swimmer who’s feet I rarely collide with because I’m working hard to just stay in their draft. You can find these people by looking for caps in your wave after the first 300 or so yards of hard swimming. Unfortunately, these “ideal” drafts are hard to keep for the entire swim…once you lose them in the crowd, they are gone for good. I’m feeling pretty happy if I find one of these perfect pairs of feet for 50% of the swim.
As swimming is my strong “suit,” I am ususally a draftee vice a drafter. While contact is expected in the first part of the stage, and around the buoys, it is very maddening to have someone hitting your feet all throughout the swim. Last race I did, this happened to me. I put on a spurt of speed to lose the guy, only to get kicked in the head by a guy from the previous wave doing SIDESTROKE! BTW, this was a SPRINT race! Unlike drafting on the bike, which reportedly makes the draftee go faster also, I feel (intuitively) that getiing drafted in the swim makes the draftee go slower. I have no data to support this, just experience and “feel” of the water. I must admit to having drafted in pools before–stay next to the laneline and off the hips of a faster swimmer–you can often slingshot by and outsprint them in the last 50, esp. if they breathe on the other side and don’t see it coming. Anyway, with waves, murky water, etc., thrown in the mix, I don’t see how drafting can be too easy to do in an open water tri.
Earl nails it. Very good. If you are in the ocean and the waves are a factor, you may want to choose your side to get a little bit of shelter from the waves.
I like to know who I am going to draft off of before the race. Then I approch them with a Sharpie and ask if they mind if I write my initials on the bottom of their feet. Easier to keep track of.
I had planned one race a few years ago to draft off a 16-year-old age group swimmer I was helping get into triathlon. I figured I could hang with him for about 300 meters and then back off, clearing the crowds and setting me up for a great swim- he was an unbelievable swimmer. He was first out of the pack going to the first bouy, and I was right on his feet. Then his 14-year-old girlfriend knocked me off his feet! I ended up in the back of the line behind one of his little sisters. Still had a great swim, but that was just too funny. I suppressed the urge to pop every single one of them on the head as I passed them on the bike. Normally, however, I do fight to hold position. Don’t feel like you have to yield.